"See if you can--no, lie still; see if you can wiggle your fingers. I
guess you're just cut, that's all. Here, let me put my handkerchief
around it. You got off lucky."

"You don't call _that_ lucky, do you?" Barnard asked. "My head aches
like blazes."

"Sure it does," said Tom, feeling his friend's pulse, "but you're all
right."

[Illustration: TOM HELPED BARNARD TO THEIR CABIN. Tom Slade at Black
Lake--Page 134]

"I got a good bang in the head," said Barnard; "I'll be all right," he
added, sitting up and gazing about him. "Case of look before you leap,
hey? Do you know what I did?"

"You stepped on the shadow instead of the log," Tom said. "I was going
to call to you, but I thought that as long as you're a scout you'd know
about that. It was on account of the fire--the way it was shining.
That's what they call a false ford----"

"Well, the next time I hope there'll be a Maxwell or a Packard there
instead," Barnard said in his funny way.

"A false ford is a shadow across a hollow place," Tom said. "You see
them mostly in the moonlight. Don't you remember how lots of fellows
were fooled like that, trying to cross trenches. The Germans could make
it look like a bridge where there wasn't any bridge--don't you
remember?"

"_Some_ engineers!" Barnard observed. "Ouch, but my head hurts! Going
down, hey? I don't like those shadow bridges; it's all a matter of
taste, I suppose. Oh boy, how my head aches!"

"If it was broken it wouldn't ache," said Tom consolingly, "or you
wouldn't know it if it did. Can you get up?"

"I can't go up as quick as I came down," Barnard said, sitting there and
holding his head in a way that made even sober Tom smile, "but I guess I
can manage it."

He arose and Tom helped him through the gully to where it petered out,
and so to their cabin. Barnard's ankle was strained somewhat, and he had
an ugly cut on his forehead, which Tom cleansed and bandaged, and it
being already late, the young man who had tried walking on a shadow
decided that he would turn in and try the remedy of sleep on his
throbbing head.

"Look here, Slady," he said, after he was settled for the night, "I've
got your number, you old grouch. I know what it means when you get an
idea in your old noddle, so please remember that I don't want any of
that bunch from down below up here, and I don't want any doctor. See?
You're not going to pull any of that stuff on me, are you? Just let me
get a night's sleep and I'll b