red, taking the word, 'and even if
you were not, you could hardly miss at that range.'

"Her color came back, and she stopped sighting to look me over. 'Now,' she
said, 'you take that road down the Duckabush, and don't you stop short of
a mile. Ain't you ashamed,' she shrilled, as I moved ignominiously into
the trail, 'going 'round scaring ladies to death?'

"But I did not go that mile. Out of sight of the cabin I found myself in
one of those old burned sections, overgrown with maple. The trees were
very big, and the gnarled, fantastic limbs and boles were wrapped in thick
bronze moss. It covered the huge, dead trunks and logs of the destroyed
timber, carpeted the earth, and out of it grew a natural fernery." He
turned his face a little, involuntarily seeking Mrs. Weatherbee. "I wish
you could have seen that place," he said. "Imagine a great billowing sea
of infinite shades of green, fronds waving everywhere, light, beautifully
stencilled elk-fern, starting with a breadth of two feet and tapering to
lengths of four or five; sword-fern shooting stiffly erect, and whole
knolls mantled in maidenhair."

"I know, I know!" she responded breathlessly. "It must have been
beautiful, but it was terrible if you were pursued. I have seen such a
place. Wherever one stepped, fronds bent or broke and made a plain trail.
But of course you kept to the beaten road."

Tisdale shook his head. "That road outside the clearing was simply a
narrow, little used path; and I was so dead tired I began to look for a
place where I might take an hour's rest. I chose a big cedar snag a few
rods from the trail, the spreading kind that is always hollow, and found
the opening screened in fern and just wide enough to let me in. Almost
instantly I was asleep and--do you know?"--the humor broke again gently--
"it was late in the afternoon when I wakened. And I was only roused then
by a light blow on my face. I started up. The thing that had struck me was
a moccasin, and its mate had dropped at my elbow. Then I saw a can of milk
with a loaf of bread placed inside my door. But there was no one in sight,
though I hurried to look, and I concluded that for some unaccountable
reason that inhospitable woman had changed her opinion of me and wanted to
make amends. I took a long draught of the milk--it was the best I ever
tasted--then picked up one of the moccasins. It was new and elaborately
beaded, the kind a woman fancies for wall decorations, and she had
prob