, her spotted fawn, which had been
frolicking among the branches of the fallen spruce-tree, skipped from
it, passed Dol with a bound which carried him a few feet, and
disappeared like a whiff too.

Here was a rouser, indeed, which no boy, unless he was in a far-gone
state of suffering, could withstand. Dol Farrar forgot his terrible
predicament. The fog had cleared away from his senses, leaving him free
to think and act once more.

"Well, I never!" he ejaculated, springing to his feet in amazement.
"Wasn't she a beauty? And wasn't she a snorter? I didn't think a deer
could make such a row as that. And to stand still and stare at me! I
wonder whether she took me for some new-fashioned sort of animal or a
gray old stump."

It was a few minutes before he again thought of his plight, and then he
was not overcome. He stood perfectly still, trying to review the
position coolly, and to get a tight grip of his feelings, so that terror
might not again master him.

"I'm in a worse scrape than I ever dreamt of," he muttered, puckering
his forehead to do some tall thinking. "And I must do something to get
out of it. But what? That's the question.

"I wonder if I loaded this 'ole fuzzee,'"--the lad was making a valiant
effort to cheer himself by being jocular,--"and blazed away with it for
a while like mad, whether there is any human being around who would hear
me. Some fellow might be hunting or trapping in this part of the forest,
or farther up the mountain. But what a blockhead I am! Why on earth
didn't I do that before I started on this wretched trail?"

But alas! as this was Dol Farrar's first adventure in American woods, it
had not occurred to him to do the right thing at the right time. Had he
fired a round of signal shots when first he lost the line of spotted
trees, he would probably have been heard at his camp, and would have
been spared the worst scare he ever had in his life. The negligence was
scarcely his fault, however; for Cyrus Garst, who had never before
undertaken the responsibility of entertaining a pair of inexperienced
boys in woodland quarters, had not, at this early stage of the trip,
arranged with his comrades to fire a certain number of shots to signify
"Help wanted!" if one of them should stray, or otherwise get into
trouble. The idea now cropped up in Dol's perplexed mind, through a
confused recollection of tales about forest misadventures which Uncle Eb
had told him by the cheery camp-fire.

So