led to a trail, was completely lost. She knew, roughly,
and in a general way, the direction of Camp Manasquan, as the camp at
Long Lake was called, but that was about all.

"If I go straight ahead I may be going just as straight as I can away
from anyone who can help Dolly," she reflected. "Or I may get over
toward Loon Pond, and run into that awful gypsy, and then I'd be worse
off than ever! Oh, I do wish I knew where I was, or how I can find
Lolla. She must know these woods, and she'd be able to help me, I'm
sure."

Finally, however, Bessie determined to move slowly along the trail in a
direction that would, she thought, take her around the bottom of Deer
Mountain. She remembered that just a little while before she had come
to the place where she had first seen Lolla, a side path had crossed the
trail on which she had followed Dolly and her captor, and it seemed
likely to her that that path would also cross the trail she was now on.

If it did she could work back to a spot she knew, and so find her
bearings, at least. Then, if there was nothing else to be done, she
would certainly be able to get back to Long Lake. For her to stay in the
woods, lost and hungry, would not help Dolly.

So she set out bravely, walking as fast as she could. The sun was high
in the heavens now, and it was long after breakfast time, so that Bessie
was hungry, but she thought little of that.

As she had hoped, and half expected, she came, presently, and at what
seemed to her the proper place, upon a trail that crossed the one she
was following, and she turned to the left without hesitation. She might,
she felt, be going in the wrong direction altogether, but she could not
very well be more hopelessly lost she was already; and, if she had to
be out in the woods without a clue to the proper way to turn, she felt
it made very, little difference whether she was in one place or in
another.

The new trail was one evidently little used, and when Bessie had been on
it for perhaps ten minutes, and was beginning to think that it was time
she came in sight of the larger trail from Long Lake to Deer Mountain,
she heard someone coming toward her, and, rounding a bend, came into
sight of Lolla.

The gypsy girl seemed overwhelmed with joy at the sight of Bessie.

"Oh, how glad I am!" she exclaimed. "I was afraid that Peter had caught
you and tied you up with your friend, and that you would think I had
sent you up there so that he would trap you! Ho