to rescue Dolly in the morning, when the guides would be
called to help, and, if necessary, men from the hotel at Loon Pond and
other places in the woods. To such a call for help, Bessie knew well
there would be an instant response.

"He'll never go back to the camp," Bessie told herself, trying to argue
the problem out, so that she might overlook none of the points that were
involved, and that might make so much difference to poor Dolly, who was
paying so dear a price for her prank. "If he did, he'd be sure that
there would be people there, looking for him, as soon as the word got
around that Dolly was missing."

She stopped for a moment, to listen attentively, but though the woods
were full of slight noises, she heard nothing that she could decide
positively was the gypsy. Still, burdened as he was with Dolly, it
seemed to Bessie that he must make some noise, no matter how skilled a
woodsman he might be, and how much training he had had in silent
traveling in his activities as a poacher and hunter of game in woods
where keepers were on guard.

"He'll find out some place where they're not likely to look for him, and
stay there until the people around here have given up the idea of
finding him," said Bessie to herself. "That's why I've got to follow him
now. And I'm sure he's on one of the trails; he couldn't carry Dolly
through the thick woods, no one could. Oh, I wish I could hear
something!"

That wish, for the time, at least, was to be denied, but it was not long
before Bessie, still tramping through thick undergrowth in the direction
she was sure her quarry had taken, came to a break in the woods, where
it was a little lighter, and she could see her way.

She saw at once that she had come to a trail, and, though she had never
seen it before, she guessed that it was the one that led to Deer
Mountain, from what Miss Eleanor had told her about the trails about
the camp. And, moreover, as she started to follow it, convinced that the
gypsy, on finding it, would have abandoned the rougher traveling of the
uncut woods, she saw something that almost wrung a cry of startled joy
from her.

It was not much that she saw, only a fragment of white cloth, caught in
the branches of a bush that had pushed itself out onto the trail. But it
was as good as a long letter, for the cloth was from Dolly's dress, and
it was plain and unmistakable evidence that her chum had been carried
along this trail.

She walked on more quickly