"
"Perhaps we are ahead of them."
"It isn't likely. Let us go on, anyway."
And on they went, another quarter of a mile. The stream was now broader,
and this raised their hopes considerably. But suddenly Tom gave a cry of
dismay.
"Look, Sam! We have reached the end of the stream!"
Sam strained his eyes and went on a few feet further. Then he gave a
groan. His brother was right, the stream had come to an end in a pond
probably a hundred feet in diameter. They had not been following the
Perch River at all, but merely a brook flowing into that stream!
CHAPTER XVII.
AN UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY.
"Tom, we have missed it!"
"It looks like it, Sam."
"What we took for the river wasn't the river at all. We must be a mile
or two out of the way."
"There is nothing to do but to go back," was the dismal response.
"Don't you think we might strike the river without going back?"
"We might, and then again we might not. I hardly feel like taking the
risk--in this blinding snow."
With heavy hearts the brothers turned the sled around and proceeded on
the back trail, if such the way may be called.
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