Part 22 (1/2)

They felt that this would be easier than the long tramp around and that they would have the advantage while swimming of an extended view and would avoid any danger which might lurk behind the trees.

They had almost reached the opposite sh.o.r.e when Archer sputtered and called out to Tom: ”Look, look!”

Tom looked and saw, hanging from a branch on the sh.o.r.e they were nearing, the two missing field gray uniform coats.

This was too much. Speechless with amazement they clambered ash.o.r.e and walked half fearfully up to their fugitive garments. There was no doubt about it, there were the two coats dangling from a low hanging branch, perfectly dry and in the pockets the spy-gla.s.s and the trusty compa.s.s.

The two boys stared blankly at each other.

”Well--what--do--you--know--about--that?” said Archer.

”They didn't steal anything, anyway,” said Tom, half under his breath.

Archer stared at the coats, then peered cautiously about among the trees. Then he faced Tom again, who returned his stare in mute astonishment.

”You don't s'pose we could have swum across in ourr sleep, do you?” said Archer.

Tom shook his head thoughtfully. Could it be that those Huns, those fiends of the air and the ocean depths, those demons who could shoot a gun for seventy miles and rear their yellow heads suddenly up out of the green waters close to the American sh.o.r.e--could it be that they were indeed genii--ghouls of evil, who played fast and loose with poor wanderers in the forest until the moment came for crus.h.i.+ng them utterly?

Or could it be that this black wilderness, perched upon its mountain chain, was indeed the magic toyland of all creation, the home of Santa Claus and----

”Come on,” said Archer, ”let's not stand herre. B'lieve _me_, I want to get as far away from this place as we can!”

CHAPTER XXVII

NONNENMATTWEIHER

But the worst was yet to come. They hurried now, for whatever the cause of this extraordinary incident, they wished to get away from it, and having crossed the lake they paused not to dry their garments but continued southward following the almost obliterated wagon tracks which ran from the sh.o.r.e.

”I wonder how the wagons got across?” said Tom.

”Wings,” said Archer solemnly, shaking his head.

In a little while they came to the toymaker's cottage, with the mechanical cuckoo and the windmills and the basket of soldiers and animals and the old Swiss toymaker himself, sitting like a big toy, in the doorway.

”Well--I'll--be----” began Archer.

Tom simply gaped, too perplexed to speak. He had believed that he was something of a woodsman, and he certainly believed that he would not go north supposing that he was going south! Could there be another Swiss toymaker, and another cottage and another squawking cuckoo, exactly like the others? Were they all alike, the lonesome denizens of this spooky place, like the wooden inhabitants of a Noah's ark?

”This Hun forest has got Aladdin's cave beat twenty ways,” said Archer.

”Either we'rre crazy or this place is.”

Suddenly the bright thought occurred to Tom to look at his compa.s.s.

Unless the magnetic pole had changed its position, and the whole earth gone askew, they were tramping northward, as he saw to his unutterable amazement.

”Did we swim across the lake or didn't we?” he demanded of Archer, roused out of his wonted stolidness.

”Surre, we did!”