CHAPTER XXV 

THE TRAIL OF THE TOURING CAR 

All started in astonishment at the footprints before them. What Tom had said was true--the prints were altogether too large to have been made by their own feet in walking through the woods. 

"How could I have made such a mistake!" murmured Dick. 

"I wonder where you got mixed up?" said Sam. "I looked at the prints down by the swamp. They seemed to be O. K. there." 

"Then that is where I must have gotten mixed up--maybe after we pulled Tom from the mud." 

"We'll have to go back," came from Tom. "Too bad! But it can't be helped. I don't blame you, Dick," he added, hastily. 

"Neither do I," put in Sam. "Anybody might make such a mistake, with nothing but that smoky lantern to guide him." 

They turned back, and after a while reached the edge of the swamp. Here, after a long search, they found their own footprints. 

"Now we are all right!" cried Sam. "Come on!" 

"Yes, and let us be careful that we don't make another mistake," added Tom. 

"I don't know about this," said Dick, hesitatingly. "Somehow, it doesn't look altogether right to me." 

"Why not?" queried his two brothers. 

"It doesn't seem to be the right direction. But they are our footprints, so we may as well follow them." 

They went on and proceeded for several hundred feet in silence. Then Tom uttered a cry of dismay. 

"Well, this beats the Dutch!" he gasped. 

"What's wrong now?" asked Dick. 
Did Dick get mixed up?
gotten