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 shore.

"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 compass. 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!"

"Then I give it up," said Tom resignedly. "The compass says north—we're going north. This is the very same toymaker."

"Go-o-od night!" said Archer, with even more than his usual vehemence. "Maybe the Gerrmans have conquerred the Norrth Pole and taken all the steel to make mountains, just like they knocked international law all endways, hey? That's why the compass don't point right. G-o-o-o-o-od night!"

This ingenious theory, involving a rather large piece of strategy even for "supermen," did not appeal to Tom's sober mind.

"That's what it is," said Archer. "You've got to admit that if they could send Zeps and submarines and things to the North Pole and cop all the steel, the British navy, and ourrs too, would be floppin' around the ocean like a chicken with its head cut off.—It's a good idea!"

Tom went up to the old toymaker, who greeted them with a smile, seeming no more surprised to see them than he had been the day before.

"North—north?" asked Tom, pointing.

"Nort—yah," said the old man, pointing too.

"Water," said Tom; "swim—swim across" (he pointed southward and made the motions of swimming). The old man nodded as if he understood.

"Ach—vauder, yach,—Nonnenmattweiher."

"What?" said Tom.

"What?" said Archer.

"Nonnenmattweiher," said the old man. "Yah."

"He wants to know what's the matter with you," said Archer.

"Water," Tom repeated, almost in desperation.

"Swim (he went through the motions): Swim across water to south—start south, go north." He made no attempt to convey the incident of the vanishing coats.

"Water—yah,—Nonnenmattweiher," the man repeated.

At last, by dint of repeating words and swinging their arms and going through a variety of extraordinary motions, the boys succeeded in conveying to the little man that something was wrong in the neighborhood of the lake, and he appeared willing enough to go back with them, trotting along beside Tom in his funny belted blouse, for all the world like a mechanical toy. Tom had his misgivings as to whether they would really reach the lake no matter which way they went, but they did reach it, and standing under the tree where they had recovered their vanished coats they tried to explain to the old man what had happened—that they had crossed from the north to the south bank and continued southward, only to find that they were going north!

Suddenly a new light illumined the little man's countenance and he chuckled audibly. Then he pointed across the lake, chattering and chuckling the while, and went through a series of strange motions, spreading his legs farther and farther apart, pointing to the ground between them, and concluded this exhibition with a sweeping motion of his hands as if bidding some invisible presence of that enchanted place God-speed across the water.

"Och—goo," he said, and shook his head and laughed.

"I know what he means," said Tom at last, with undisguised chagrin, "and I'm a punk scout. I didn't notice anything at all. Come on. We've got to swim across again—that's south, all right."

"What is it?" asked Archer.

"I'll show you when we get there—come on."

The little Swiss toymaker stood watching them and laughing with a spasmodic laugh which he might have caught from his own wooden cuckoo. When they reached the other shore Tom fell at once to examining a very perceptible rift in the earth a few feet from the shore.

"Do you see?" he said, "we floated over on this piece of land. The tree where we hung our coats was on the real shore, and——"

"Go-od night, and it missed the boat," concluded Archer.

"This tree here is something like it," said Tom, "and that's where I made my mistake. I ought to have noticed the trees and I ought to have noticed the crack. Gee, if my scout patrol ever heard of that! 'Specially Roy Blakeley," he added, shaking his head dubiously.

It was indeed something of a "bull" in scouting, though perhaps a more experienced forester than Tom would have become as confused as he in the same circumstances. Perhaps if he had been as companionable with his school geography as Archer had been with his he might have known about the famous Lake Nonnenmattweiher in the silent depths of the Schwarzwald and of its world-famed floating island, which makes its nocturnal cruises from shore to shore, a silent, restless voyager on that black pine-embowered lake.

As the boys looked back across the water they could see the little Swiss toymaker still standing upon the shore, and looking at him through the rescued glass (of which they were soon to make better use), Tom could see that his odd little figure was shaking with merriment—as if he were wound up.