land was not valuable till it
was cleared, and there was plenty of prairie land to be had, from which
neither stick nor stump must be removed, these woods were very lonely.
Occasionally a trapper or a sportsman wandered through them, but just
here where Ingolby was none ever loitered. It was too thick for game,
there was no roadway leading anywhere, but only an overgrown path, used
in the old days by Indians. It was this path which Ingolby trod with
eager steps.

Presently, as he stood still at sight of a ground-hog making for its
hiding-place, he saw a shadow fall across the light breaking through the
trees some distance in front of him. It was Fleda. She had not seen
him, and she came hurrying towards where he was with head bent, a
brightly-ribboned hat swinging in her fingers. She seemed part of the
woods, its wild simplicity, its depth, its colour-already Autumn was
crimsoning the leaves, touching them with amber tints, making the
woodland warm and kind. She wore a dress of golden brown which matched
her hair, and at her throat was a black velvet ribbon with a brooch of
antique paste which flashed the light like diamonds, but more softly.

Suddenly, as she came on, she stopped and raised her head in a listening
attitude, her eyes opening wide as if listening, too--it was as though
she heard with them as well; alive to catch sounds which evaded capture.
She was like some creature of an ancient wood with its own secret and
immemorial history which the world could never know. There was that in
her face which did not belong to civilization or to that fighting world
of which Ingolby was so eager a factor. All the generations of the wood
and road, the combe and the river, the quarry and the secluded boscage
were in her look. There was that about her which was at once elusive and
primevally real.

She was not of those who would be lost in the dust of futility.
Whatever she was, she was an independent atom in the mass of the world's
breeding. Perhaps it was consciousness of the dynamic quality in the
girl, her nearness to naked nature, which made Madame Bulteel say that
she would "have a history."

If she got twisted as she came wayfaring, if her mind became possessed
of a false passion or purpose which she thought a true one, then tragedy
would await her. Yet in this quiet wood so near to the centuries that
were before Adam was, she looked like a spirit of comedy listening till
the Spirit of the Wood should break the