thusiastically.

So it was agreed, and before day, while the mist was yet rolling across
the fields, and the hedge sparrows were beginning to chirp, the two set
forth from the Pollock place, crossed the wet fields, and the road, and
set off down the slope of a long hill, following, as Henry said, near
the east boundary of the Atterson farm--the line running from the
automobile road to the river.

It was a dull spring morning. The faint breeze that stirred on the
hillside was damp, but odorous with new-springing herbs. As Hiram
and Henry descended the aisle of the pinewood, the treetops whispered
together as though curious of these bold humans who disturbed their
solitude.

"It doesn't look as though anybody had been here at the back end of old
Jeptha Atterson's farm for years," said Hiram.

"And it's a fact that nobody gets down this way often," Henry responded.

The brown tags sprung under their feet; now and then a dew-wet branch
swept Hiram's cheek, seeking with its cold fingers to stay his progress.
It was an enchanted forest, and the boy, heart-hungry from his two years
of city life, was enchanted, too!

Hiram learned from talking with his companion that at one time the
piece of thirty-year-old timber they were walking through had been
tilled--after a fashion. But it had never been properly cleared, as the
hacked and ancient stumpage betrayed.

Here and there the lines of corn rows which had been plowed when the
last crop was laid by were plainly revealed to Hiram's observing eye.
Where corn had grown once, it should grow again; and the pine timber
would more than pay for being cut, for blowing out the big stumps with
dynamite, and tam-harrowing the side hill.

Finally they reached a point where the ground fell away more abruptly
and the character of the timber changed, as well. Instead of the stately
pines, this more abrupt declivity was covered with hickory and oak. The
sparse brush sprang out of rank, black mold.

Charmed by the prospect, Hiram and Henry descended this hill and came
suddenly, through a fringe of brush, to the border of an open cove, or
bottom.

At some time this lowland, too, had been cleared and cultivated; but now
young pines, quick-springing and lush, dotted the five or six acres of
practically open land which was as level as one's palm.

It was two hundred yards, or more, in width and at the farther side
a hedge of alders and pussywillows grew, with the green mist of young
leav