To-day the wood-longing possessed Colin so strongly that it actually stung him all over, from his neck to his drumming, purposeless heels. He glanced up into the brilliant September sky arching the salt-marshes, questioning it as to what might be going on in the woods at this moment under its imperial canopy. And the blue eye of the sky winked back at him, hinting that it knew of forest secrets to be discovered to-day--of fascinating woodland creatures to be seen for a moment at their whisking gambols. The sunlight's energy raced through him. The briny ozone of the salt-marshes was a tickling feather in his nostrils, teasing him with a desire to find an outlet for that energy in some new and unprecedented form of activity. He sprang to his feet, spurning the plumy grass. "Gee whiz! I'm not going to lie here any longer, smelling marsh-hay," he cried half articulately, his eye taking in the figures of two hay-makers who were mowing the tall marsh-grass and letting it lie in fragrant swathes to dry into the salt hay that forms such juicy fodder for cattle. "It's me for the woods to-day! I want to go farther into those old woods than I've ever gone before--far enough to find Varney's Paintpot and the Bear's Den--and the coon's hole that Toiney Leduc saw among the alders an' ledges near Big Swamp!" He halted on the first footstep, whistling blithely to a gray-winged yellow-legs that skimmed above his head. The curly, boyish whistle, ascending in spirals, carried the musical challenge aloft: "I'm glad I'm alive and athirst for adventure; aren't you?" To which the bird's noisy three-syllabled cry responded like three cheers! "It's me for the woods to-day!" Colin set off at an easy lope across the marshes. "I'm going to look up Coombsie and Starrie Chase--and Kenjo Red! Us boys won't have much more time for fun before school reopens!" grammar capsizing in the sudden, boisterous eddy within him. That eddy of excitement carried him like a feather up an earthy embankment that ascended from the low-lying marshes, over a fence, and out onto the drab highroad which a little farther on blossomed out into houses on either side and became the quiet main street of Exmouth. Colin turned his face westward toward the home of "Coombsie," otherwise Mark Coombs--also shortened into "Marcoo" by nickname-loving boydom. He had not gone far when his loping speed slackened abruptly to a contemplative trot. The trot sobered down to a crestfallen walk. The walk dwindled into a halt right in the middle of the sunny road.