"That's it, but I'm not going. I'm just as well satisfied to look at the photograph after he's developed it. I'm going to stay here," came from Phil. "Sure," added Tom. The cries continued, and then ceased. Tom and Phil waited nearly an hour for Sid to reappear, and when he did not come they started back for college, thinking he had gone another way. But poor Sid was in dire straits, as we shall soon see. CHAPTER XXVII WOES OF A NATURALIST Sid Henderson was of a very hopeful disposition, otherwise he never would have undertaken to get a picture of that fox after it had once been alarmed. But he fancied he could trail it to its burrow, and he wanted very much to get a photograph of the animal in its home surroundings. So, unmindful of the desertion of his chums, he plunged on into the swamp. The footing became more and more treacherous as he advanced, and he had to go slowly, looking here and there for grass hummocks to support him. His camera, too, was a handicap. "But I'm going to get that fox!" he exclaimed. "I just need a picture like that. Besides, I may find in this swamp some material I can use in my biological experiments." On he went, leaping from hummock to hummock. Once he nearly slipped and barely saved himself from falling into a slough of black water. "I wonder how deep that is?" he remarked, and taking a dead branch he thrust it straight down. He found that the hole was deeper than he had anticipated. Keeping a sharp lookout for the animal he was after, he was at length rewarded by a sight of it slinking along through the bushes. He started forward eagerly, so eagerly, in fact, that he did not pick his steps. A moment later he slipped from a grass hummock and went into the muddy bog, up to his waist. "Wow! Whoop! Help! Here, fellows! Come here and help me! Bring a fence rail!" he called, for he felt himself sinking down deeper and deeper. Tom and Phil heard his cries, but thought he was only calling to them to come and see some natural curiosity or view the fox, so they did not respond. Sid called again and again, but got no answer. Then he tried to scramble from the bog, and found it hard work, for he had to hold his camera high up that it might not get wet. At last he managed to free his legs from the sticky mud and reached a comparatively firm place. But what a plight he was in! Plastered with swamp-ooze to his waist, he looked like some sewer laborer. Though he did not know it, his face was spotted with globules of mud, splashed up in his struggles to get from the bog. "Well, I certainly am in bad," he remarked to himself. "Lucky I put on old clothes. I can't get much worse, that's one satisfaction. I might as well keep on. Maybe I can get that fox now."