ang
and twittered. There the children's voices were mingled in cheery shouts
and laughter with the other happy sounds that filled the glades. But
when they came to the dark pines, solemn and silent except when the wind
moved in their tasselled tops with mysterious, mournful whispering, the
children hushed their voices and walked softly upon the deep moss.

"It is like being in church," said Helen, her little soul exquisitely
sensitive to the mystic, fragrant silences and glooms that haunted the
pine grove.

On a sloping hillside under the pines they lay upon the mossy bed, the
children listening for the things that lived in these shadowy depths.

"They are all looking at us," said Isabel in a voice of awed mystery.
"Lots and lots of eyes are just looking, looking, and looking."

"Why, Isabel, you give me the creeps," laughed Jane. "Whisht! They'll
hear you," said Isabel, darting swift glances among the trees.

"The dear things," said Jane. "They would love to play with you if they
only knew how." This was quite a new idea to the children. Hitherto
the shy things had been more associated with fear than with play. "They
would love to play tag with you," continued Jane, "round these trees, if
you could only coax them out. They are so shy."

Stealthily the children began to move among the bushes, alert for the
watching eyes and the shy faces of the wild things that made their homes
in these dark dwellings. The girls sat silent, looking out through the
interlacing boughs upon the gleam of the lake below. They dearly
loved this spot. It was a favourite haunt with them, the very spot for
confidence, and many a happy hour had they spent together here. To-day
they sat without speech; there was nothing that they cared to talk
about. It was only yesterday in this same place they had talked over all
things under the sun. They had exchanged with each other their stores of
kindly gossip about all their friends and their friends' friends. Only
yesterday it was that Ethel for the twentieth time had gone over with
Jane all the intricately perplexing and delightful details in regard
to her coming-out party next winter. All the boys and girls were to be
invited, and Jane was to help with the serving. It was only yesterday
that in a moment of quite unusual frankness Ethel had read snatches of
a letter which had come from Macleod, who was out in a mission field in
Saskatchewan. How they had laughed together, all in a kindly way, over