Caroline slipped out of the woodshed with Henry D. Thoreau barking
under his breath at her heels, and struck across the dusty mountain
road into the trail. The advantages of the woodshed were many: it
was cool and dark, the stacked wood had a soothing odor and a neat,
restful appearance, and one was more or less forgotten there. More
important, it lay directly under the long living-room, and sounds
carried easily through the primitive plank floor. Up to now the
murmur of the company's voices had been a negligible quantity, a
background for thought, merely, but suddenly a familiar intonation
had risen higher.

"Why, certainly, Caroline can show you--she knows all the trails.
Yes, indeed, she'd be delighted, I'm sure.... Oh, any time you
prefer. Don't let her dawdle along, though; she's such a strange
child--sometimes it will take her ten minutes to get across the
road, and then another time she will be as quick as a flash. I'll
see where she is."

But even as the boards squeaked above her head, Caroline had fled,
and Henry D. Thoreau, smarting from the indignity of her brown,
berry-stained hand circling his muzzle, was expressing his feelings
to the yellow birches and ground pine.

"Oh shut up, won't you, Henry D.?" she urged him indignantly, "do
you want to take that fat old tiresome lady around our nice
mountain? I don't b'lieve you do. You can be called 'girlie' if you
want to--I don't. She is so hot and she creaks so when she walks! I
_had_ to hold your nose."

Henry D., who had only wanted an explanation, subsided, and they
trudged on in silence, Indian file, along the narrow trail.

The early afternoon sun filtered down through the birch and beech
leaves on Caroline's brown head and Henry D.'s brindled back, pine
needles crunched under their feet, thick glossy moss twinkled with
last night's rain. They sniffed the damp, wholesome mold
delightedly; from time to time Caroline kicked the rotten stump of
some pithy, crumbling trunk or marked patterns with her finger nail
in the thin new moss of some smooth slab. Indian pipes and glowing
juniper berries embroidered the way; pale, late anemones, deceived
by the cold mountain weather, sprang up between the giant mushrooms.
It was as still as eternity.

The wood grew steadily thicker, the light pierced down in golden
arrows only, the silence was almost oppressive. Caroline stepped
suddenly out of the tiny path, pushed aside a clump of fern, buried
her arm up to