re going to leave, and I've sent that telegram just at
the wrong time. Now, what's to be done?"

There could be no question but that the men were intending to break
camp, and, uncertain as to what he should do, Jet watched until all the
camp equipage had been stowed on board the craft.

Then they pushed off, rowing leisurely down the lake, and again Jet
asked himself what should be done.

To pursue them in the boat, no matter how far in the rear he might keep
himself, would simply be to tell the men he intended to watch them,
and, unfamiliar as he was with the country or woodcraft, it seemed both
foolish and dangerous to follow on land.

Not until those he so ardently wished to keep in sight had rowed fully
a mile away did he arrive at any decision, and then he said to himself:

"There's no other way out of it. I must go on, and take the chances.
I only hope when Jim comes back he won't be such a fool as to pull down
the lake in search of me, for they'd be certain to see him."

Filling his pockets with cartridges, and wrapping in a paper a small
stock of provisions, he set off, only to come back a moment later and
write on a piece torn from a paste board box:

"I have had to go down the lake. Wait here for me."

This he fastened to a tree where Jim would be most likely to see it
immediately on his arrival, and then he started for the second time.

When Jet set out, the boat containing the men was a long distance in
advance heading directly toward the lower end of the lake where were a
number of small islands.

At first it had seemed a simple thing to follow a craft by keeping
close to the edge of the water; but in a short time he learned the
difference to his cost.

CHAPTER XXIV

A STERN CHASE

For a certain distance Jet could walk through the fringe of bushes
growing at the water's edge, enabled to see the boat and its occupants
distinctly, and then a bit of marsh or small stream would force him to
a detour of a mile or more.

"At this rate, I'm making about three times the distance they have to,"
he said, as he staggered across a shallow water-course so laden with
the provisions, and the gun that he could not hold the branches back
from his face, and thus received many a severe blow. "Most likely the
next time I get to the edge of the lake they will be behind one of
those islands, and then what's to be done?"

The catastrophe he feared did not occur quite as soon as he feared,
although