coltishly, and they
pushed on. The wood grew thicker; now and then Rose-Marie had to
force his way along the tiny trail; his red tassels caught on the
twigs.

"I'll tell you what," Caroline began, suddenly, "I'm going to try
that wood track to-day and see where it goes, to the very end. It
must go somewhere. Where do they haul the wood from, if there isn't
some place at the end? Come on, Rose-Marie!"

At a point where the trail forked she led the donkey along the wider
and less interesting way. It was ridged and rutty, and Rose-Marie
sniffed disgustedly as he slipped among the gnarled roots; the
apples bumped and slid in the pannier. After a while Caroline
stopped under a tree, ate three of the apples, gave the donkey two,
and resting in an artfully constructed nest of rug and pillow,
dipped refreshingly into the Moonstone.

"That's a kind of luncheon," she remarked philosophically, "and now
we'll start again. I'll go to the end of this, if it takes all day!"

They settled down to a dogged pace and after an hour, during which
the wood grew thinner by imperceptible degrees, found themselves on
a relatively easy track that forked suddenly into a genuine country
road, stretching far to left and right of them. It was a new country
to Caroline; she found no landmarks whatever. The road glared with
heat, the dust was powdery, the shade nowhere, once they had cleared
the wood. She sighed with fatigue and emptiness; it seemed a long
pull, and the harbor far from worth the voyage, when all was said
and done.

"What _did_ we want to get to this nasty hot road for, Rose-Marie?"
she cried pettishly, shifting from one long leg to the other,
shrugging a nervous, bony shoulder. "Oh, what's the sense of
anything, anyway?"

Rose-Marie turned a patient, clear brown eye toward her and shook
his head vaguely. Gnats buzzed about his flexible ears, and with a
swishing fanning motion he displaced them.

"If my back aches," she warned him callously, "you'll have to take
me home, you know! Tired or not. It feels as if it might, any
minute. I never used to get tired, this way."

A half mile along the road, set off to the left, among cool trees
and behind a great well sweep, she perceived suddenly a white farm
house. It stood alone, neighborless and well up on a drained,
southerly slope; smoke rose languidly from one of its chimneys.

"Perhaps they'll give us some milk, Rose-Marie," said Caroline, "and
farms usually have cookies. If