Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/182

 twinkled with last night's rain. They sniffed the damp, wholesome mold delightedly; from time to time Caroline kicked the rotten stump of some pithy, crumbling trunk or marked patterns with her finger nail in the thin new moss of some smooth slab. Indian pipes and glowing juniper berries embroidered the way; pale, late anemones, deceived by the cold mountain weather, sprang up between the giant mushrooms. It was as still as eternity.

The wood grew steadily thicker, the light pierced down in golden arrows only, the silence was almost oppressive. Caroline stepped suddenly out of the tiny path, pushed aside a clump of fern, buried her arm up to the elbow in a hollow stump and produced a large crumbling molasses cooky.

"Just where I left it, Henry D., just exactly!" she whispered delightedly. "I wish now I'd left 'em both, but I didn't feel able to spare 'em at the time."

They ate the cooky pleasantly, Henry D. receiving every third bite with scrupulous accuracy.

"I used to think maybe that huckleberry-