Leaving the forest, he emerged into the open country.

There was here and there a house before him; but the aspect of the country seemed strangely familiar to him.

He could not understand it.

He had never been in this part of the country before; yet there was a great house with two barns by the side of it, which he was positive he had seen before.
He walked across the field a little farther, when, to his astonishment and dismay, he beheld the lofty turrets of the State Reform School.

He had been walking in a circle, and had come out of the forest near the place where he had entered it.
Bobby, as the reader has found out by this time, was a philosopher as well as a hero; and instead of despairing or wasting his precious time in vain regrets at his mistake, he laughed a little to himself at the blunder, and turned back into the woods again.
"Now or never!" muttered he.