He sobbed aloud and stretched out his hands into the darkness. "Mother, mother," he whispered, "I wish I hadn't come." When he awoke in the morning he was frightened to find that the little food which he had saved for his breakfast was gone. Some animal had stolen it in the night. His ankle was still badly swollen but it did not pain him so much except when he tried to stand on it. He was hungry and looked around for something that he could eat. A little below the edge of the mountain stood a birch tree. He dragged himself down to it and cut off long strips of the bark. This he chewed for his breakfast, washing it down with a few sips of water, which seemed hardly to wet his parched throat. "I'll crawl down to the spring, if I can, and die there," he thought. "Maybe they will find me sometime." Then, as he was starting, something came to him. Smoke signals! Perhaps one of the Scouts would see them and know what they meant. He was too weak and lame to spell out a message, like we did on Bob's Hill. Instead, he built two fires, throwing on grass and leaves to make a thick smoke. There was no wind and the smoke went straight up. That was one of the signals, which Mr. Norton had taught us. It meant: "I have lost the camp. Help." He hadn't lost any camp, of course, but he didn't know what else to send. He hoped it would let us know where he was and that something had happened. All day long he tended his fires, his ankle aching horribly because he had to move around so much. Between times he sat on the mountain, looking down at Bob's Hill and Plunkett's woods and the village beyond, chewing birch bark and moistening his lips with the few drops of warm water that were left. Late that afternoon he gave up and made up his mind that he would crawl down to the spring before dark and die there, he was so thirsty. He turned to look down at his home, perhaps for the last time, and to see Bob's Hill once more. There were Plunkett's woods, and there, the twin stones, like thimbles, they were so far away. And there--what was that? From the ground close to one of the stones, the one where we build our fires, a great column of smoke went up and he saw some things moving around it, like flies or ants, they looked so small. Then the column of smoke broke into long and short puffs. It was a signal. Slowly he spelled the words: "I-S, Is; I-T, it; Y-O-U, you; B-I-L-L, Bill?" Jumping to his feet, although he almost screamed with pain, Bill grabbed his blanket and held it down over one of the fires, which was still sending out a big smoke; then pulled it off. Again and again he sent up the puffs of smoke. His blanket was blazing; his hands were burned to a blister; he was almost strangled with the smoke; but Bill kept on, until he had spelled out something which could be seen from the top of Bob's Hill, far below: .... H . E -- L ..... P Then he fainted away. CHAPTER IX FOUND AT LAST