But the worst was yet to come. They hurried now, for whatever the cause of this extraordinary incident, they wished to get away from it, and having crossed the lake they paused not to dry their garments but continued southward following the almost obliterated wagon tracks which ran from the shore.
"I wonder how the wagons got across?" said Tom.
"Wings," said Archer solemnly, shaking his head.
In a little while they came to the toymaker's cottage, with the mechanical cuckoo and the windmills and the basket of soldiers and animals and the old Swiss toymaker himself, sitting like a big toy, in the doorway.
"Well—I'll—be——" began Archer.
Tom simply gaped, too perplexed to speak. He had believed that he was something of a woodsman, and he certainly believed that he would not go north supposing that he was going south! Could there be another Swiss toymaker, and another cottage and another squawking cuckoo, exactly like the others? Were they all alike, the lonesome denizens of this spooky place, like the wooden inhabitants of a Noah's ark?
"This Hun forest has got Aladdin's cave beat twenty ways," said Archer. "Either we'rre crazy or this place is."
Suddenly the bright thought occurred to Tom to look at his compass. Unless the magnetic pole had changed its position, and the whole earth gone askew, they were tramping northward, as he saw to his unutterable amazement.
"Did we swim across the lake or didn't we?" he demanded of Archer, roused out of his wonted stolidness.
"Surre, we did!"