192 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. 
boy of few words, my companion had confidence in him 
as a guide. We followed him through wet woods, over 
bogs and fallen trees, for an hour or more, until he began 
to show signs of bewilderment and discomfiture, when 
we asked him if he was quite sure that he knew the prem- 
ises. “Yes; but he don’t see where the pesky thing is.” 
But when to our inquiry for the direction towards home 
he pointed to quite a different point of the compass, our 
confidence in the silent guide was a little shaken, and 
each one did a little hunting on his own account. By 
and by the lad called to us and said, “Some how or 
other the darned woods had kinder got turned around, 
but if we would go back to the clearing and again start 
right, he felt sure we could find the fool bird and nest, 
as they were at the left of the wood road near a large 
stump and a whopping big tree.” So we dragged our- 
selves and our heavy boots back to the edge of the woods 
and took a new start. As another hour of wading 
through swamps and underbrush, where each bush gave 
us a bath, proved unsuccessful, we concluded to post- 
pone the search until the next day. 
Although we had failed to find the nest, we found 
many interesting plants and flowers, among them several 
orchids, as a partial remuneration. . 
Coming to a little opening in the woods we found the 
ground starred with the dwarf dogwood (Cornel Can- 
adensis) and star flower (Trientalis Americana). It is 
these little flowers that give such a charm to the woods 
—filowers that we must search for in sequestered places 
