whispered forcibly, "Through a little green door in my
Great-aunt Peggy's cheese-room."

"Had she told you never to open it?"

"Yes, but she and Hannah left me alone when they went to meeting and
I found the key in a little box, and the key had a green ribbon and
it unlocked the door, and I was in the woods around here, and Aunt
Peggy's house was gone and everything."

"How long have you been here?"

"I don't know. It must have been a long time, for I have done so much
work, and learned to do so much that I had started with all done."

"It is just the same with me," whispered the boy.

Letitia shivered, half with joy, half with horror. "Did you come
through a little green door?"

"No, I came through a book."

Letitia jumped. "A book!" she repeated feebly.

"Yes, it was a book. I didn't know it at first. I thought it was just
a wooden box up in Grandmother Peabody's garret, and it was always
locked, and Grandmother Peabody said I was never to ask any questions
about it, and never to try to open it. I expect she was afraid I
might try to pick the lock. Then I began to suspect that it was a
book, and then I found the key. I stayed at home from meeting just
like you, and I had a cold. My father had died, and I had come to
live with Grandmother Peabody."

"I remember now Aunt Peggy told Hannah about it," whispered Letitia
with sudden remembrance.

"I don't know how long ago it was, for I have done so much work
making wooden nails, when all the nails I had ever seen were bought
at a shop, and such things, that it seems an awful long time; but I
was left alone just the way you were, and I found the key to that
book that looked like a wooden box. It was in a little drawer of
Grandmother's secretary."

"Did it have a green ribbon on it?" whispered Letitia breathlessly.

"Yes, it did, honest, a green ribbon, and I went up in the garret and
I unlocked that book, and first thing I knew I was in the woods
around the house where I live now, and a wolf was chasing me, and Mr.
Cephas Holbrook shot him, and took me home."

Letitia sighed. "Do you like it here?" she whispered.

"I think it is awful, don't you?"

"Yes, I do, but I don't dare say so."

"I do," said Josephus Peabody. "I ain't afraid of anything that ain't
bigger and stronger than I am, honest, and I have killed one wolf my
own self. That is true, but I didn't kill the others. I told that
because that other girl was turning up her nose so at me. But I