ed chatterbox.

Before he had decided one way or the other, the squirrel, still scolding
and playing bo-peep, scampered off his bough, and up the trunk of the
maple. Thence he quickly made good his escape from one tree to another,
affording a whisking, momentary view now and again of his white breast
or bushy tail. Dol absolutely forgot the blazed trail, forgot the
stories which he had heard about forest perils, forgot every earthly
thing but his admiration for the pretty, tantalizing fellow; though to
do the lad justice, he soon came to the conclusion that the camp must be
in a worse strait for want of provisions before he could have the heart
to shoot him. He gave chase nevertheless, plunging along in a ziz-zag
way over a carpet of moss and dry pine-needles, and through some dense
tangles of undergrowth, uttering a welcoming screech whenever he saw
the bright eyes of the little trickster peering down at him from a
bough.

He had travelled farther than he knew before his interest in the game
waned. He began to feel that it was rather beneath the dignity of a
fellow who wore moccasins, carried coon-skin pouch and powder-horn, and
who was bound for remote solitudes in search of the lordly moose, to be
interested in such an insignificant phase of forest life as the doings
of a red squirrel.

Then he started back to find the trail. He walked a considerable
distance. He searched hither and thither, straining his eyes anxiously
through the bewildering gloom of the forest, but never a notched tree
could he see. Whereupon Dol Farrar called himself some pretty hard
names. He remarked that he had been a "hair-brained fool" and a
"greenhorn" ever to leave the spotted track, but that he wasn't going to
be "downed;" he would search until he found it.

And he certainly was enough of a greenhorn not to know that every step
he now took was carrying him away from the trail, and plunging him into
a hopeless, pathless labyrinth of woods. For Dol had lost all knowledge
of directions, and was completely "turned round;" which means that he
was miserably lost.

The disaster came about in this way. The forest here was very dense, the
giant trees interlocked above his head letting so little light filter
through their foliage that he could scarcely see twenty yards ahead of
him, and that in a puzzling, shadowy gloom resembling an English
twilight.

When he ceased chasing the squirrel, he imagined that he retraced his
steps directly towa