Suddenly she thought of a little satin-wood box with a picture on the lid which Aunt Peggy kept in her top bureau-drawer.  Letitia had often seen this box, but had never been allowed to open it.

“I wonder if the key can be in that box,” said she.

She did not wait a minute.  She was so naughty that she dared not wait for fear she should remember that she ought to be good.  She ran out of the cheese-room, through the kitchen and sitting-room, to her aunt’s bedroom, and opened the bureau drawer, and then the satin-wood box.  It contained some bits of old lace, an old brooch, a yellow letter, some other things which she did not examine, and, sure enough, a little black key on a green ribbon.

Letitia had not a doubt that it was the key of the little green door.  She trembled all over, she panted for breath, she was so frightened, but she did not hesitate.  She took the key and ran back to the cheese-room.  She did not stop to shut the satin-wood box or the bureau drawer.  She was so cold and her hands shook so that she had some difficulty in fitting the key into the lock of the little green door; but at last she succeeded, and turned it quite easily.  Then, for a second, she hesitated; she was almost afraid to open the door; she put her hand on the latch and drew it back.  It seemed to her, too, that she heard strange, alarming sounds on the other side.  Finally, with a great effort of her will, she unlatched the little green door, and flung it open and ran out.

Then she gave a scream of surprise and terror, and stood still staring.  She did not dare stir nor breathe.  She was not in the open fields which she had always seen behind the house.  She was in the midst of a gloomy forest of trees so tall that she could just see the wintry sky through their tops.  She was hemmed in, too, by a wide, hooping undergrowth of bushes and brambles, all stiff with snow.  There was something dreadful and ghastly about this forest, which had the breathless odor of a cellar.  And suddenly Letitia heard again those strange sounds she had heard before coming out, and she knew that they were savage whoops of Indians, just as she had read about them in her history-book, and she saw also dark forms skulking about behind the trees, as she had read.

Then Letitia, wild with fright, turned to run back into the house through the little green door, but there was no little green door, and, more than that, there was no house.  Nothing was to be seen but the forest and a bridle-path leading through it.

Letitia gasped.  She could not believe her eyes.  She ran out into the path and down it a little way, but there was no house.  The dreadful yells sounded nearer.  She looked wildly at the undergrowth beside the path, wondering if she could hide under that, when suddenly she heard a gun-shot and the tramp of a horse’s feet.  She sprang aside just as a great horse, with a woman and two little girls on his back, came plunging down the bridle-path and passed her.  Then there was another gun-shot, and a man, with a wide cape flying back like black wings, came rushing down the path.  Letitia gave a little cry, and he heard her.