me to
pass, the woman would be safe for hours she could count upon.

That afternoon, Jerry reported that Tenney had been over and promised to
appear next morning with his axe. Then Raven went off for a walk along
the road skirting the base of the mountain. Possibly he chose it because
it led to the woman's old home, and the thought of her was uppermost in
his mind. The road itself was still and dark, subdued to a moving
silence, it might almost seem, by the evergreens, watchers on the high
cliff at the left, and the quiet of the river, now under ice, on the
other side below. He kept on to the stepping stones, at the verge of the
scattered settlement of Mountain Brook. They were rough granite at
regular distances apart, only the tops of them visible above the ice,
and they made the concluding stage of the walk across lots from Wake
Hill to Mountain Brook. In spring the water swirled about them madly,
and it was one of the adventures of boyhood for a squad to go over to
the stepping stones and leap from one to another without splashing into
the foam below. This was "playing Moosewood," the Indian who had been
found there drowned, whether by his own act because the local palefaces
had got his hill-top, over beyond, or from prolonged fire-water, no one
knew. But always he was a noble red man and one boy acted his despairing
part, and the others hunted him across the stones. In the game, he
always escaped and "shinnied" up the cliff opposite, by fissures the
boys of every generation knew, and struck a pose among the evergreens
above, whooping down defiance.

Raven stopped there and gave a thought to the boy he had been, and then
to Anne, who had once taken the walk across lots with him, and who, when
he told her how they used to play Moosewood, insisted on crossing,
though he had tried to dissuade her, noting her foolish shoes, and aware
that she had no adroitness of eye and muscle. But she had a will of
steel in these matters, as well as those of the spirit, and would not be
prevailed on. Three of the daring leaps she made from one stone to
another and at the fourth she slipped and he caught and held her, the
delicate slenderness of her, in his arms. He had felt awkward merely and
sorry for her, she so overprized doing things superlatively well, and
when they reached the bank she was flushed and shaken, and again he was
sorry, it seemed so slight a thing to care about. But as he looked down
there now he was thinking really