dently started to run and, missing the trail, had
rushed into a tall clump of bramble bushes. The brambles had wrapped
themselves about her like the tentacles of an octopus, and the jaunty
feather was caught in an overhanging branch.

"Don't kill the snake, Percy," objected Ben. "There are lots more just
like him, and it won't help any to kill one. Besides, they never start a
quarrel."

"All right, old S. P. C. A.," said Percy, as relieved as the snake,
which immediately glided off into the bushes as if it had actually
understood that Ben was making a plea for its life.

With subdued giggles they released Nancy from the clutches of the
brambles. The feather was broken in half and dragged dejectedly over the
crown of her hat, and there was a long scratch across her left cheek.

"Do you remember Jim Phipps in the Fourth Grade, Ben," began Percy,
pointing to Nancy's hat. "Do you remember the poem called 'Absalom' he
recited? That is, he began it but he never got any farther than the
first line, because he started out by saying, 'Abalsom, my son
Abalsom.'"

The laugh was against Nancy, but she took it good-naturedly and joined
in, while she broke the feather in half and left the lower end standing
up in the band in a straight cockade.

And now the path, although it was on level ground, seemed to grow more
and more difficult. Ben, glancing behind him, doubtfully remarked:

"As long as there are only two miles of this, I suppose we can stand it,
but if any person feels tired, sing out and we'll start back without
trying to make Indian Head."

"We are all right," they assured him.

For a long time they walked on in silence. The ground was soft and
squashy under foot, and Billie privately believed that the trail lay
only in Ben's imagination.

"Ben," she said at last. "I think maybe we had better start back. We
don't seem to be getting anywhere, and this ground is like a sponge."

Silently they turned their faces in the other direction, feeling all at
once chilled and tired and hungry. Ben, leading the way with Billie,
began to look serious.

"Billie," he said in a low voice after a while, "I am afraid I am not
worthy the confidence Miss Campbell has placed in me. I am afraid I'll
have to confess that we are lost."

CHAPTER V.

IN THE BOG.

It was not an unique experience to Billie to be lost. She had once known
what it was to be out of sight of every human habitation on a Western
plain, and furtherm