key of the little green door.
She trembled all over, she panted for breath, she was so frightened,
but she did not hesitate. She took the key and ran back to the
cheese-room. She did not stop to shut the satin-wood box or the
bureau drawer. She was so cold and her hands shook so that she had
some difficulty in fitting the key into the lock of the little green
door; but at last she succeeded, and turned it quite easily. Then,
for a second, she hesitated; she was almost afraid to open the door;
she put her hand on the latch and drew it back. It seemed to her,
too, that she heard strange, alarming sounds on the other side.
Finally, with a great effort of her will, she unlatched the little
green door, and flung it open and ran out.

Then she gave a scream of surprise and terror, and stood still
staring. She did not dare stir nor breathe. She was not in the open
fields which she had always seen behind the house. She was in the
midst of a gloomy forest of trees so tall that she could just see the
wintry sky through their tops. She was hemmed in, too, by a wide,
hooping undergrowth of bushes and brambles, all stiff with snow.
There was something dreadful and ghastly about this forest, which had
the breathless odor of a cellar. And suddenly Letitia heard again
those strange sounds she had heard before coming out, and she knew
that they were savage whoops of Indians, just as she had read about
them in her history-book, and she saw also dark forms skulking about
behind the trees, as she had read.

Then Letitia, wild with fright, turned to run back into the house
through the little green door, but there was no little green door,
and, more than that, there was no house. Nothing was to be seen but
the forest and a bridle-path leading through it.

Letitia gasped. She could not believe her eyes. She ran out into the
path and down it a little way, but there was no house. The dreadful
yells sounded nearer. She looked wildly at the undergrowth beside the
path, wondering if she could hide under that, when suddenly she heard
a gun-shot and the tramp of a horse's feet. She sprang aside just as
a great horse, with a woman and two little girls on his back, came
plunging down the bridle-path and passed her. Then there was another
gun-shot, and a man, with a wide cape flying back like black wings,
came rushing down the path. Letitia gave a little cry, and he heard
her.

"Who are you?" he cried breathlessly. Then, without waiting for an
an