Page:Frank Packard - The Miracle Man.djvu/215

 seat. Rather than objecting to the short cut that Thornton had begun to negotiate, the road, now that she gave her attention to it, she found to be quite the prettiest bit she had seen in the whole afternoon's run, where, in the rough, sparsely settled north country, all was both pretty and a delight—miles and miles without the sign of even a farmhouse, just the great Maine forests, so majestic and grand in their solitude, bordering the road that undulated with the country, now to a rise with its magnificent sweep of scenery, now to the cool, fresh valleys full of the sweet pine-scent of the woods. They had explored much of it together in the little 'run-about,' nearly every day a short spin somewhere; to-day a little more ambitious run—the whole afternoon, and tea, a picnic tea, an hour or more back, in a charming glade beside a little brook.

"Oh, this is perfectly lovely!" she exclaimed; and then, with a breathless laugh, as a bump lifted her out of her seat: "It is rough—isn't it?"

Thornton laughed and slowed down.

"I don't fancy it's used much, except in the winter for logging. But if the map says we can get through, I guess we're all right—there's about an eight mile stretch of it."

It was growing dusk, and the shadows, fanciful and picturesque, were deepening around them. Now it showed a solid mass of green ahead, and, like a sylvan path, the road, converging in the distance, lost itself in a wall of foliage; now it