How long Chris, in lonely, crazed repentance, had sheltered in the camp on the mountain-side could only be a matter of guess. Herb inclined to think that he had been there for weeks,—months, perhaps,—judging from the withered spruce bed and the dry boughs and sticks upon the camping-ground, which had evidently been gathered and broken for fuel. His ravings made it clear that, on returning to the old haunts after years of absence, he had missed the trail he used to know, and wandered wearily in the dense woods about the foot of Katahdin before he escaped from the prison of trees, and climbed to the hut he sought.