he other fellow's done it for me."

And thereafter he took Bill Turnbull's path just where it touched the
corner of his own cleared land. But Malvina Dodd, to the day of her
death, never once walked that way, but, going and coming, took the
winding track that her husband had laid out for her when their home was
built.

[Illustration]

The next maker of the path was a boy not ten years old. His name was
Philip Wessler, and he was a charity boy of German parentage, who had
been adopted by an eccentric old man in the town, an herb-doctor. This
calling was in more repute in those days than it is now. Old Doctor Van
Wagener was growing feeble, and he relied on the boy, who was grateful
and faithful, to search for his stock of simples. When the weather was
favorable they would go together through the Ogden woods, and across the
meadows to where the other woods began at the bottom of the hill. Here
the old man would sit down and wait, while the boy climbed the steep
hillside, and ranged hither and thither in his search for sassafras and
liverwort, and a hundred and one plants, flowers, and herbs, in which
the doctor found virtue. When he had collected his bundle he came
running down the path to where the doctor sat, and left them for the old
man to pick and choose from, while he darted off after another load.

[Illustration]

He did a boy's work with the path. Steep grades were only a delight to
him, and so in the course of a year or two he trod out, or jumped out,
a series of break-neck short-cuts. William Turnbull--people called him
William now, since he had built a clap-board house, and was using the
log-cabin for a barn--William Turnbull, observing these short-cuts,
approved of their purpose, but not of their method. He went through the
woods once or twice on odd days after his hay was in, and did a little
grading with a mattock. Here and there he made steps out of flat stones.
He told his wife he thought it would be some handier for her, and she
told him--they were both from Connecticut--that it was quite some
handier, and that it was real thoughtful of him; and that she didn't
want to speak no ill of the dead, but if her first man had been that
considerate he wouldn't never have got himself drowned going pickerel
fishing in March, when the ice was so soft you'd suppose rational folks
would keep off of it.

[Illustration]

This path was a path of slow formation. It was a path that was never
destined to become a r