They crouched at the end of the tree. It occurred to Alan that he had been foolish to bring Lentz. His mistrust of the fellow was growing. But it seemed an unreasonable mistrust. "Where are we, Lentz?" "Halfway there, I think. Or more. We should see the light of the camp fire soon." They started again. Presently Lentz stopped. Alan could see him, ten feet ahead, standing against a tree-trunk. "What is it?" Alan advanced until they stood together. Lentz pointed. Two eyes gleamed in the brush ahead. Alan impulsively raised his weapon, but Lentz checked him. "Quiet! Some animal." * * * * * Not an Indian. Alan relaxed. Of course not--human eyes do not glisten like that in the darkness. It may have been a wildcat. The eyes moved; there was a rustling; the thing was gone. "Shot would spoil everything," Lentz whispered. "Come on." Once more they started. The stars were almost hidden by the thick interlacing of the forest trees. Alan had long since lost his sense of direction. This space--Eighty-Sixth Street, from the park to Riverside Drive. How different now! Alan was lost. He followed Lentz. But it seemed that Lentz was bending always too much to the left. Once Alan said: "That way, isn't it?" "No. I think not. That is north. This is west." But to Alan the feeling persisted. They plunged down into a dell, at the bottom of which ran a tiny, purling brook. They waded it. "Lentz!" he whispered. They crouched together. There was something close ahead of them in the woods. Figures--unmistakable human figures--stood lurking against a tree off there! In the silence Alan could almost hear his pounding heart. He was afraid to move; a crackling twig would have sounded like a shot. A moment. Then there was a rustling ahead. The figures moved. They ran. The underbrush cracked under them. They had seen Alan and Lentz and were running. They reached, in a few feet, an open space of starlight. Alan saw them clearly. He gasped, and then he called softly, cautiously: "Nanette! Ed--stop! It's Alan--" It was Nanette and I, wandering lost. CHAPTER XIII THE TRAITOR We stood together, there in the forest glen, for a minute or two exchanging swift whispers. The fellow Lentz--I did not know who he was then, unfortunately--stood a few feet from us. He was listening to the woods. Then he came to us. "I thought we might have been heard. Was any one following you?" He addressed it to me. Nanette and I had feared pursuit, but there had seemed none. We had tried to head south--Josefa had said she would direct our pursuers the other way. She was to have fired a shot--to make plausible her story that we had escaped her. We had heard no shot. Nor had Alan and Lentz. And in these silent woods the shot would have been heard plainly. Nanette and I were wholly lost. I realized it when I tried to tell Alan which way we should go to reach the tower.