assented--partly, I suppose, to keep me from bad company and out of
mischief. Many a pleasant tramp I had with him; for he would beguile
the way with anecdotes and jokes, and bits of information upon geology,
botany, the birds of that section--everything likely to interest a boy.
What wonder that I regarded a day with him as a genuine holiday?

One October afternoon he said: "To-morrow morning, Captain Tom" (the
title was a pleasantry of his),--"to-morrow morning I shall be glad of
your company. I am going some five miles back into the country to
visit an invalid."

"Very well, Father," I answered. "I shall be ready."

Accordingly, the next day, at the appointed hour, I joined him at the
gate of the convent, and we set out--this time in silence, for he
carried the Blessed Sacrament. At first our course was through the
open plain; but later it led, for perhaps a mile, across a corner of
the pine forest, which extended all along the ridge and shut the valley
in from the rest of the world. We entered the wood confidently, and
for half an hour followed the windings of the path, which gradually
became less defined. After a while it began to appear that we were
making but little headway.

Father Friday stopped. "Does it not seem to you that we are merely
going round and round, Tom?" he asked.

I assented gloomily.

"Have you a compass?"

I shook my head.

"Nor have I," he added. "I did not think of bringing one, being so
sure of the way. How could we have turned from it so inadvertently?
Well, we must calculate by the sun. The point for which we are bound
is in a southerly direction."

Having taken our bearings, we retraced our steps a short distance, then
pushed forward for an hour or more, without coming out upon the
bridle-path which we expected to find. Another hour passed; the sun
was getting high. Father Friday paused again.

"What time is it?" he inquired.

I looked at the little silver watch my mother gave me when I left home.
"Nine o'clock!" I answered, with a start.

"How unfortunate!" he exclaimed. "There is now no use in pressing on
farther. We should arrive too late at our destination. We may as well
rest a little, and then try to find our way home. It is unaccountable
that I should have missed the way so stupidly."

But it was one thing to order a retreat, as we soldiers would call it,
and quite another to go back by the route we had come. We followed
first one track and then a