cked by thickly growing underbrush.
Then she turned back, but now she could not find the pool. The shadows
deepened; she could hardly distinguish one tree from another, and there
was no sound or sign from the gray pony.

"What shall I do?" she said, standing close to the trunk of a pine tree
that rose straight and tall with wide-spreading branches. She realized
that she must now be some distance from the road and the big oak tree
where she had left the pony-cart, and Fluff perhaps was deep in this
wilderness, unable to make his way back; and, worst of all, night was
close upon her.

It was indeed a dangerous position for a little girl to be alone in a
wilderness as Winifred found herself. It was a time when many wild
beasts still wandered about, often coming near to the outskirts of towns
and villages. Winifred remembered that only a few weeks earlier a
catamount had been killed at Fair Mount, and she knew that in the early
spring bears left the dens where they had slept through the winter, and
wandered through the woods eating the tender young buds and leaves. She
crouched closer to the tree as she remembered these things, and then
suddenly she recalled the words that she had worked on her sampler:
"There shall no evil befall thee. For he shall give his angels charge
over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways."

Her mother had traced the words, and Winifred had worked them in dull
blue yarns on the perforated wool cloth. She said them over aloud: "No
evil befall thee," and was no longer afraid. She did not think now of
the beasts of the dark wood, but of a kindly presence that would shelter
her.

"Perhaps Fluff will come and find me," she thought hopefully. "Anyway,
Ruth will soon be back with Gilbert, and they will call my name, and I
shall call back," and so comforted and encouraged Winifred sat down on
the soft pine spills and leaned back against the tall tree. A pair of
squirrels chattered noisily in the branches; a soft-footed little animal
sped by almost touching her feet, and she could hear faint calls from
nesting birds near at hand.

"For he shall give his angels charge over thee," the little girl
whispered to herself, and soothed and quieted by the spring fragrance of
the wood her eyes closed.

Ruth, meanwhile, was trudging along the road toward home. She was sure
that she could find the way without any trouble.

"All I have to do is to turn when I come to the river road and follow it
straight back to t