At one time she heard the leaves rustling, by the side of the road, and looking in under the trees, she saw a gray squirrel, just in the act of leaping up from the leaves upon the ground to the end of a log.  As soon as he had gained this footing, he stopped and looked round at Mary Bell.  Mary Bell stopped too; each looked at the other for several seconds, in silence,—­the child with an expression of curiosity and pleasure upon her countenance, and the squirrel with one of wonder and fear upon his.  Mary Bell made a sudden motion toward him with her hand to frighten him a little.  It did frighten him.  He turned off and ran along the log as fast as he could go, until he reached the end of it, and disappeared.

“Poor Bobbin,” said Mary Bell, “I am sorry that I frightened you away.”

A few steps farther on in her walk, Mary Bell came to a place where a great number of yellow butterflies had settled down together in the path.  Most of them were still, but a few were fluttering about, to find good places.

“Oh, what pretty butterflies!” said Mary Bell.  “They have been flying about, I suppose, till they have got tired, and have stopped to rest.  But if I were a butterfly, I would rest upon flowers, and not upon the ground.”

Mary Bell paused and looked upon the butterflies a moment, and then said,

“And now how shall I get by?  I am sure I don’t want to tread upon those butterflies.  I will sit down here, myself, on a stone, and wait till they get rested and fly away.  Besides, I am tired myself, and I shall get rested too.”

Just as she took her seat she saw that there was a little path, which diverged here from the main road, and turned into the woods a little way, seeming to come back again after a short distance.  There were many such little paths, here and there, running parallel to the main road.  They were made by the cows, in the spring of the year when the roads were wet, to avoid the swampy places.  These places were now all dry, and the bye-paths were consequently of no use, though traces of them remained.

“No,” said Mary Bell.  “I will not stop to rest; I am not very tired; so I will go around by this little path.  It will come into the road again very soon.”

Mary Bell’s opinion would have been just, in respect to any other path but this one; but it so happened, very unfortunately for her, that now, although not aware of it, she was in fact very near the great pine-tree, where the road into the woods branched off, and the path which she was determining to take, though it commenced in the main road leading to Mary Erskine’s, did not return to it again, but after passing, by a circuitous and devious course, through the bushes a little way, ended in the branch road which led into the woods, at a short distance beyond the pine-tree.