r purpose.

For a second, so piqued was I, I almost decided to ride on and leave the
willful child to her own devices. But the broken bridle shamed me. I
dismounted to examine it; it could be held together safely enough for
the return, I saw, with a piece of stout twine, and there was certain to
be a habitation with a piece of stout twine in it on down the road
somewhere. Susan must have come that way and could tell me. But I must
find her first....

"Susan!" I called. "_Oh-ho-o-o! Soo-san!_"

No answer. I called again--vainly. Nothing for it, then, but a search! I
tethered Jessica to the cedar stump, convinced that Alma wouldn't wander
far from her old friend, and started off through the field past a senile
apple tree bearing a few scattered blossoms, beyond which a faintly
suggested path seemed to lead upward through a wonder-grove of the pink
dogwood, mingled with laurel and birch and towering cedars. That path, I
knew, would have tempted Susan.

What there was of it soon disappeared altogether in an under-thicket of
high-bush huckleberry, taller than a man's head. Through this I was
pushing my way, and had stooped to win past some briers and protect my
eyes--when I felt a silk scarf slip across them, muffling my face.

It was swiftly knotted from behind; then my hand was taken, and Susan's
voice--on a tone of blended mischief and mystery--quavered at my ear:
"Hush! Profane mortal--speak not! This is holy ground."

With not another word spoken she drew me after her, guiding me to freer
air and supporting me when I stumbled. We continued thus for some
moments, on my part clumsily enough; and then Susan halted me, and
turned me solemnly round three times, while she crooned in a weird
gypsy-like singsong the following incantation:

_Cedar, cedar, birch and fern,
Turn his wits as mine you turn._

_If he sees what now I see
Welcome shall this mortal be._

_If he sees it not, I'll say
Crick-crack and vanish May!_

But I must have seen! My initiation was pronounced successful. From that
hour all veils were withdrawn, and I was made free of the magic
circle....

It was a dip in Lethe. Dinner was forgotten--the long miles home and the
broken bridle. A powerful enchantment had done its work. For me, only
the poised moment of joy was real. Nothing else mattered, nothing else
existed, while that poised fragile moment was mine. We talked or were
silent-