"You bet I was; and exhausted, too."
"What did you do after that?" asked Dave.
"Started right off. I had a compass and a pretty fair idea of the direction. I blazed a trail—believe that's what you call it—so as to know the place again."
"How?" queried Sam.
"With a big jack-knife. In about two hours I came across some loggers. By that time I was so played out with hunger and excitement that I collapsed completely—don't believe I could have gone a step further, Bob. Of course I was an object of curiosity, but they were a good-hearted lot, and gave me all I wanted to eat. Beans, bacon and coffee tasted good, I can tell you. Well, it was simply great."
"Guess it fixed you up all right," said Bob.
"No, it didn't. I was so stiff and sore and had such a headache that it was a bunk for me the whole of that day and most of the next. One of the men, Jake Lawson, took a letter to the railroad station. Of course, it was to my father, and in it I told him that if he cared anything about a pile of silver it might be well to keep the whole thing quiet for a while."
"Then you didn't tell the loggers what had happened to you?" exclaimed Bob, in great astonishment.
"No—they thought I had merely wandered off and become lost in the woods."
"How did your father manage to find the place?"