Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/192

174 ilization as a mixed good, may be cheered accordingly,

For to-day, however, I had something else in my eye; and once back in the road I started for the entrance to what we children knew familiarly as "Millstone"—that is to say, Millstone Pasture; a large, irregular clearing, or half clearing, distinguished by the presence of two broad flat boulders, lying one upon the other. This was among the best of our foraging grounds; a boy's wild orchard—orchard and garden in one. Here we gathered all the berries before named, and besides them checkerberries (boxberries), dangleberries, and grapes.

The path leading into it was still open, but there was no need to go far to discover that here, as in Harvey White's, the wood had got the upper hand of everything else. "I should starve here," I said to myself, "at the very height of the berry season." Nothing looked natural—nothing but the superimposed boulders. They had suffered no change, or none except an inevitable "subjective" dwindling. As for the old apple orchard near them (in which I shot