iscovery, bumping over sunken logs, crashing into rotten stumps, and
ruthlessly destroying whole acres of moss and water-reeds. It had all
been just as lovely as Elizabeth had dreamed, but there were other
things upon which she had not reckoned. There were black water-snakes
coiled amongst the rushes, and horrible speckled frogs sitting up on
water-lily leaves; frogs with awful goggle eyes that looked at you out
of the darkness of your bedroom for many, many nights afterwards.
There were mud-turtles that paddled their queer little rafts right up
to yours, and poked their dreadful snaky heads right up at you out of
the water. And besides all the creepy, crawly things that swarmed down
in the golden-brown depths and made your hair stand on end when your
bare feet touched the water, there were thousands of frightful leggy
things that wore skates and ran swiftly at you right over the surface.
Even the air was filled with blue "darning-needles" and stingy-looking
things, that buzzed and danced about your ears, so that there was no
safety nor comfort above nor below. And so Elizabeth had returned from
her first visit to her Eldorado full of mingled feelings. And all the
time she was learning that great lesson of life: that the fairy bowers
which beckon us to come away and play give pure pleasure only when
viewed from the stony pathway that leads up to the schoolhouse of duty.
But that was a lesson Elizabeth took many years to learn.

So she merely glanced up the creek and sighed as they climbed the hill.
She said nothing to Susie of all it meant to her. For Susie, though a
very dear girl, was not a person who understood.

Over The Slash they went, through old Sandy McLachlan's woods, down his
lane to the highway, and with a last glad rush right into the
schoolyard.

Eppie joined Elizabeth at her barnyard gate. Childlike, they had both
practically forgotten the fear that had hung over Eppie's head early in
the summer, and were happily unconscious that the little home in the
woods was already another's.

Forest Glen School stood near the road; so near, indeed, that the porch
actually encroached upon the Queen's Highway. But there was plenty of
room behind the building. For beyond a lumpy yard, innocent of a blade
of grass, stretched miles of Wully Johnstone's swamp, which had been
appropriated by the pupils as a playground. This seemed only just, for
remains of the forest still held possession of much of the
schoo