“That night journey was long-drawn torture.  The moon rose, but its light barely penetrated the fir boughs.  My coat and shoes were gone, torn from me in the rapids, and I walked blindly into snares of broken and pronged branches, trod tangles of blackberry, and more than once my foot was pierced by the barbs of a devil’s-club.  Dawn found me stumbling into a small clearing.  I was dull with weariness, but I saw a cabin with smoke rising from the chimney, and the possibility of a breakfast heartened me.  As I hurried to the door, it opened, and a woman with a milking pail came out.  At sight of me she stopped, her face went white, and, dropping the bucket, she moved backward into the room.  The next moment she brought a rifle from behind the door.  ‘If you come one step nearer,’ she cried, ‘I’ll shoot.’”

Tisdale paused, and the humor broke gently in his face.  “I saw she was quite capable of it,” he went on, “and I stopped.  It was the first time I had seemed formidable to a woman, and I raised my hand to my head—­my hat was gone—­to smooth my ruffled hair; then my glance fell from my shirt sleeves, soiled and in tatters, down over my torn trousers to my shoeless feet; my socks were in rags.  ‘I am sorry,’ I began, but she refused to listen.  ‘Don’t you say a word,’ she warned and had the rifle to her shoulder, looking along the sight.  ’If you do, I’ll shoot, and I’m a pretty good shot.’

“‘I haven’t a doubt of that,’ I answered, 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.”