Gilbert took his way along the trail, sick at heart. How could he tell
Tom Slade of this frightful thing? It was his first day at camp and it
would cast a shadow on his whole vacation. Soon he espied a light
shining in the distance. That was a camp, no doubt. By leaving the trail
and following the light, he could shorten his journey. He was not so
sure that he wanted to shorten his journey, but he was ashamed of this
hesitancy to face things, so he abandoned the trail and took the light
for his guide.

Soon there appeared another light near the first one, and then he knew
that he was saving distance and heading straight for camp. He had
supposed that the trail went pretty straight from the vicinity of camp
to that dismal pond in the woods. But you can never see the whole of a
trail at once and it must have formed a somewhat rambling course.

Anyway there were the lights of camp off to the west of the path, and
Gilbert Tyson hurried thither.

CHAPTER XXV

A VOICE IN THE DARK

Gilbert soon discovered his mistake. When a trail has brought you to a
spot it is best to trust that trail to take you back again. Beacons,
artificial beacons, are fickle things. Gilbert had much to learn.

He had lost the trail and he soon found that he was following a phantom.
One of the lights was no light at all, but a reflection in a puddle in
the woods. The woods were still full of puddles; though the ground was
firm it still bore these traces of its recent soaking. And the damage
caused by the high wind was apparent on every hand, in fallen trees and
broken limbs. There was a pungent odor to the drenched woods.

Gilbert picked his way around these impediments of wetness and debris.
The night was clear. There were a few stars but no moon. Doubtless, he
thought, the reflection in the puddle was the reflection of a star.
Presently he saw something black before him. In his maneuvers to keep to
dry ground he had in fact already gone beyond it, and looked back at it,
so to say.

Now he could see that the reflection in the puddle was derived from a
light on the further side of the black mass. Other little intervening
puddles were touched with a faint, shimmering brightness.

Gilbert approached the dark object and saw that it was a fallen tree.
The wound in the earth caused by its torn-up roots formed a sort of
cavern where the slenderer tentacles hung limp like tropical foliage. If
there was a means of entrance to this dank littl