dalous far 'awa-a-ay' as you talk like," murmured the
man, jestingly; and just then a fresh breath of the evening breeze
brought plainer and nearer the soft boom of a bass-drum.

"Are they coming this way?" asked Mary.

"No; they're sort o' dress-paradin' in camp, I reckon." He began to draw
rein. "We turn off here, anyway," he said, and drove slowly, but point
blank into the forest.

"I don't see any road," said Mary. It was so dark in the wood that even
her child, muffled in a shawl and asleep in her arms, was a dim shape.

"Yes," was the reply; "we have to sort o' smell out the way here; but my
smellers is good, at times, and pretty soon we'll strike a little sort
o' somepnuther like a road, about a quarter from here."

Pretty soon they did so. It started suddenly from the edge of an old
field in the forest, and ran gradually down, winding among the trees,
into a densely wooded bottom, where even Mary's short form often had to
bend low to avoid the boughs of beech-trees and festoons of grape-vine.
Under one beech the buggy stood still a moment. The man drew and opened
a large clasp-knife and cut one of the long, tough withes. He handed it
to Mary, as they started on again.

"With compliments," he said, "and hoping you won't find no use for it."

"What is it for?"

"Why, you see, later on we'll be in the saddle; and if such a thing
should jess accidentally happen to happen, which I hope it won't, to be
sho', that I should happen to sort o' absent-mindedly yell out 'Go!'
like as if a hornet had stabbed me, you jess come down with that switch,
and make the critter under you run like a scared dog, as it were."

"Must I?"

"No, I don't say you _must_, but you'd better, I bet you. You needn't if
you don't want to."

Presently the dim path led them into a clear, rippling creek, and seemed
to Mary to end; but when the buggy wheels had crunched softly along down
stream over some fifty or sixty yards of gravelly shallow, the road
showed itself faintly again on the other bank, and the horse, with a
plunge or two and a scramble, jerked them safely over the top, and moved
forward in the direction of the rising moon. They skirted a small field
full of ghostly dead trees, where corn was beginning to make a show,
turned its angle, and saw the path under their feet plain to view,
smooth and hard.

"See that?" said the man, in a tone of playful triumph, as the animal
started off at a brisk trot, lifted his head and neigh