er ear,
pointed in the direction of the woods just beyond the village.

The girl's face looked serious, as if she were perhaps a little
frightened at what the old lady had told her; but if she could get all
the jewels she wanted, it was worth more than one fright, she thought;
so off she started without a word.

The shy little blossoms that hide their faces from the sunlight grew
here and there in the woods.

White star-flowers and purple hepaticas nodded on their slender stems,
while the crimson and white wood-sorrel fairly ran wild, creeping in and
out through bush and brier, like a host of fairies in striped
petticoats.

"A nice place enough," said the child, tossing her head, "for those who
know of nothing better; but I can't stop to admire such simple things.
Gems and jewels are the only flowers I care for."

The shadows were growing longer and deeper all around her, for the sun
was almost down, and as she looked up through the trees she could see
the pale face of the young moon peeping down at her through the
branches.

"Oh, if the wise old woman had only come with me!" said the child, in a
whisper. The shadows took on strange, ghostly shapes, and the tall
pine-trees, so high that their topmost branches seemed to rest against
the sky, sang softly and slowly and all together,

"Take care--take care--oh--oh--ough."

She had never realized before how full of sounds the stillness of the
deep woods may be, and it seemed to her as if the rustling of the leaves
and the singing of the wind were strange unearthly voices calling out to
her and warning her to go back. But in spite of the rustling leaves and
the mournful sighing of the pines the little girl hurried on. Perhaps,
just because of them, she hurried all the faster, for she felt quite
sure that she was nearing the place to which she had been directed. And
in a few moments she saw just before her the gray moss-grown rocks piled
one above another which the wise old woman of Hollowbush had described,
and heard far below the rushing and tumbling of a brook.

Surely I must have been deceived! she thought.

Here was no strange country sown with jewels, but simply a rocky ravine,
where ferns waved in the wind, clinging to the rocks, and catching the
spray from the water as it bubbled and hissed and fell in a snowy pool
below.

"This can't be the place," said the child, as she looked around; "but
while I am here I may as well see what it is."

So she clambe