He stepped forth from the cabin to the middle of the clearing, and sent his voice ringing out in a distance-piercing hail.  He loaded his rifle and blazed away with it, firing a volley of signal-shots.

Neither shout nor shots brought him any answer.

The second cabin was likewise empty, and, judging from the withered remains of a bed, had evidently been long unused.

“Well, fellows!” said the leader, with manifest chagrin, “we’ll only have to fix up something to eat, make ourselves comfortable, and wait patiently until our guide puts in an appearance.  Herb Heal never broke an engagement yet.  He’s as faithful a fellow as ever made camp or spotted a trail in these forests.  And he promised to wait for me here from the first of October, as it was uncertain when I might arrive.  I’m mighty hungry.  Who’ll go and fetch some water from the lake while I turn cook?”

Dol volunteered for this business, and brought a kettle from the cabin.  He found it near the hearth, on which a fire still flickered, side by side with a frying-pan and various articles of tinware.  Cyrus rolled up his sleeves, took the canisters of tea and coffee with other small stores from his knapsack, proceeded to mix a batter for flapjacks, and showed himself to be a genius with the pan.

The meal was soon ready.  The food might be a little salt and greasy; but camp-hunger, after a tramp of a dozen miles, is not dulled by such trifles.  The trio ate joyously, washing the fare down with big draughts of tea, rather fussily prepared by Neal, which might have “done credit to many a Boston woman’s afternoon tea-table”—­so young Garst said.

Yet from time to time longing looks were cast at the low camp-door.  And when daylight waned, when stars began to glint in a sky which was a mixture of soft grays and downy whites like a dove’s plumage, when the islets on Millinokett’s bosom became black dots on a slate-gray sheet, and no laden hunter with rifle and game put in an appearance, even Cyrus became fidgety and anxious.

“I hope the fellow hasn’t come to grief somewhere in the woods,” he said, while a shiver of apprehension shot down his back.  “But Herb has had so many hairbreadth escapes that I believe the animal has yet to be born which could get the better of him.  And he can find his way anywhere without a compass.  Every handful of moss on a trunk or stone, every turn of a woodland stream, every sun-ray which strikes him through the trees, every glimpse of the stars at night, has a meaning for him.  He reads the forest like a book.  No fear of his getting lost anyhow.  Come, boys, I guess we’d better build up our fire, make things snug for the night, and turn in.”

Rather dejectedly the trio set about these preparations.  In twenty minutes’ time they were stretched side by side in the wide bunk, with their blankets cuddled round them, already venting random snores.

“Hello!  So you’ve got here at last, have you?”