concerning each, vouched for by no less an authority than
Weaver Jimmie, that her listener regarded them and their exponent with
something like awe.

They journeyed on, every new turn revealing untold wonders and giving
an added stimulus to the leader's lively imagination. And indeed the
forest was a place in which anyone might expect to meet a fairy or a
goblin behind every tree. The happy sense of unreality lent by the
uncertainty of distances, the airy unsubstantial appearance of the
leaf-grown earth; the dazzling splashes of golden light on the green,
the sudden appearance of open glades choked with blossoms; and through
all the ringing harmony of a hundred songsters combined to make the
woods a veritable fairyland.

And Scotty soon found to his joy that he was to have his part in
interpreting its beauties too, for Isabel came to the end of her tales
at last and was full of questions. What was that sad little
"tee-ee-ee," somebody was always saying away far off. It must be a
fairy too. But Scotty had come down to realities now, and felt more at
home. That? Why, that was only a whitethroat. Didn't she hear how it
said, "Hard-times-in-Canady!" She laughed aloud and imitated the song,
setting all the woods a-ring with her clear notes. And what made those
bells ring up in the tree? Those weren't bells, they were just veerys,
and they said, "Ting-a-ling-a-lee!" But the bobolinks had bells; they
would go back to the clearing and hear them ring in the hayfield, and
there was a meadow-lark's nest there, and lots of plovers; yes, and if
she would come down to the creek that ran across the Scotch line he
would show her a mud turtle, and they could catch some fish, and there
was a boiling spring there, where the water was so cold you couldn't
put your feet into it, and it bubbled all the time, even in the winter.

And then they found flowers, oh, so many flowers, big, pink, bobbing
ladles' slippers, and delicate orchids and great flaming swamp lilies;
and there were wonderful pitcher-plants, too, with their tall crimson
blossoms. Scotty explained the workings of the perfidious little
vessels, and they sat down and watched with absorbed interest the poor
foolish insects slip happily down the silken stairway to certain death.
And under Isabel's magic touch the little green pitchers became
dungeons, presided over by a wicked giant, and filled with helpless
prisoners.

And so they might have rambled in this enchan