"He was a better weather prophet than I, for I hadn't gone two miles when the storm broke. And such a storm! It was a terror! At first it was a gale of wind, and maybe it didn't hit the trees, though. The way they came crashing down made me sick at heart. You know how I feel about trees. That I might get hurt didn't bother me half so much as to see the way those magnificent old wonders were being demolished. "Though it was summer it grew pretty dark in the woods and, for the first time I ever remember, I lost my way, I didn't know it just then. I thought I was going north, when all the time I must have been going west. I didn't want to stop. I thought I would be courting just as much chance of getting hit by a falling tree if I stood still as if I kept on going. Besides I was anxious to reach the camp. I had been following a narrow trail, as well as I could under the circumstances, and I supposed I was still on it. It was not until long afterward that I realized that I had made a mistake. "Well, I plodded along for hours thinking I'd soon reach the camp. It was then pitch dark and raining hard. I was beginning to tire, too. I wasn't in the least worried about not finding the camp. I knew, of course, by that time that I was lost, but I knew, too, I'd be all right when morning came. What bothered me was to hunt some place where I could get out of the rain and spend the night. But I couldn't find even an overhanging rock, though I kept my pocket searchlight going constantly. "The last time I turned it on my watch I saw it was ten o 'clock. After that--well here comes the queerest story you ever heard. I was stumbling along in the dark, when all of a sudden the ground seemed to disappear under my very feet. I felt myself falling. I don't suppose it was more than ten feet, but it seemed a mile. I struck something hard, all in a heap. After that I didn't remember anything until I opened my eyes, groaning terribly. It was just getting daylight. I was lying at the bottom of a gorge. Bending over me was the most terrifying person I had ever seen in all my forest wanderings. It was a man and he was a regular giant. He had a head of long snow-white hair and a long white beard that made him look like Father Time. But his face was young, almost child-like, except his eyes. They were big and black and wild. When he saw my eyes were open he gave a kind of leap into the air and shouted at the top of his lungs: 'He is alive again! My son has come back!'