“I’m afraid I don’t,” his companion said.
“It brings us out on the state road. The state road runs right along the edge of these woods. Even if this path wasn’t here I could find the way all right. Listen, can you hear voices—way far off? Those are in cars on the state road.”
“I hear voices, but I don’t hear any cars,” said Emerson.
“Maybe there are some people walking on the road, hey?”
“It sounds to me like calling,” said Emerson.
“When we get to the state road, we follow it right down into Main Street,” said Pee-wee.
“We will have made quite an evening of it,” said Emerson.
“Oh, boy, you said it,” commented Pee-wee.
The direction in which they were going, as Pee-wee had said, was toward the state road which bordered the woods. The woods path came out into that road and once upon the road, their journey would be nearly over.
Pee-wee was not at first excited by the distant voices, for the course of the road seemed to explain them. But, as his companion had observed, there was no sound of autos. Moreover, since the voices were loud enough to be heard at such distance, they certainly were not in the ordinary tones of casual passers-by. Yet casual talking is often strangely audible through woodland in the night.