For almost two hours he plodded on, burdened with his rifle and the
pair of eagles, scratching his hands and face, tearing his clothes.
It was a miserable, heart-breaking tramp, one which might have caused
a less plucky lad to sit down and give way to doleful helplessness.
Even Ralph felt an uncanny sense of utter loneliness, and he
upbraided his own stupidity, as he chose to call it, in wandering so
far afield.

At last he noticed a faint roaring noise at the right, and he turned
in that direction, blindly, aimlessly. As he advanced through the
undergrowth the sound grew louder and louder, until finally he
emerged from the thicket and stood upon the bank of a deep stream
which rushed turbulently along and dropped over a ridge, falling
sixty or seventy feet into a cup-like hollow in the rock.

Ralph uttered a cry of delight. "Why, it's my own waterfall! I've
been wandering in a big circle all this while, and here I am not
far from my boulder where---ouch!" The sentence ended in a loud
wail of agony, for, taking a step forward, the young wayfarer's
foot had slipped on a loose stone. His ankle was severely wrenched.

For a few moments the pain was intense, almost unendurable. Poor
Ralph groaned aloud and sank down on the ground, biting his lips
in trying to keep tears of agony from welling to his eyes. How
could he walk the remaining distance home? Even with an improvised
crutch made from a forked branch of some tree, it would be well-nigh
impossible to travel up and down the stony grades that stretched
between the place where he had met with this unfortunate accident
and the farmhouse.