They awoke to find the world wet and gray, with a soft, mistlike rain falling. The difficulty experienced in getting a fire started with only damp wood for fuel and the consequent wait for breakfast depressed them. Matters were made no better when they embarked in a boat whose every surface gleamed with water. They had eaten Tim’s pickerel, and, since the fire had been weak, eaten it in a somewhat underdone condition, and Pud had felt squirmy ever since. On the whole it was a low-spirited trio who set forth through a silver-gray void to find their way out of Turtle Pond. Twice they thought they had discovered the outlet and twice they were forced to back hurriedly out of the entangling weeds. At last, though, they found the stream and headed safely into it. There wasn’t much to be seen save bedraggled shrubs along the banks or an occasional clump of trees. The fine rain fell silently and ceaselessly. They had progressed slowly the matter of a mile and a half, perhaps, when Harmon broke the depressed silence. ‘Look yonder, Mister Pud,’ he exclaimed. ‘See ’at big tree ’at’s leanin’ over!’ ‘Yes, what about it?’ ‘I ain’ see no such tree like ’at when we comes in here.’ ‘We-ell, I don’t think I did, either,’ answered Pud, ‘but I guess it was there.’ The tree in question, seen vaguely through the grayness ahead, leaned at an angle of some forty-five degrees across the stream, and it did seem strange that none of them recalled seeing it before. Tim voiced the growing conviction of all when, viewing it from beneath, he said: ‘This isn’t the way we came up, Pud.’ ‘Well, I don’t know,’ replied Pud doubtfully. ‘Maybe that tree fell over last night.’ ‘It might have, but this creek’s different. It doesn’t twist about so much, for one thing; we’ve been going pretty straight for ’most a mile, I guess; and it’s deeper; you can’t see the bottom nearly so plain.’ ‘Of course not, when it’s raining. What do you say, Harmon?’ ‘I reckon we done got los’,’ answered Harmon simply. ‘Lost, my eye! Even if this isn’t the way we came, it’s bound to lead back to the river. I guess we got mixed up back there and took the stream that led out of the pond over to the left of where we fished, Tim. Anyway, the current’s going the way we’re going, and so it must lead back to the river.’