After a while she stood up and brushed and shook the pine needles off her uniform and climbed still further. There was a small clearing where the railroad track cut through on its zigzag way up the mountain. She crossed the track and climbed higher. She did not know where the school bounds ended and forbidden territory began; she had forgotten that there was such a thing as a boundary line, and she kept on pushing up, up the mountain. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, rushing in her direction with the most hideous baying she had ever heard, bounded a wild beast. Her heart leaped in terror, beating frantically against her chest, then seemed to stop entirely, before she realized that the beast was Ariel. "Ariel!" she cried. "Oh, Ariel!" as the bulldog knocked her down in the ecstasy of his greeting. "Ariel, please!" The dog began bounding about her, barking wildly, and she lay quietly on the fallen pine needles until he stopped and stood at her feet, sniffing her anxiously. "Where's Paul?" she asked, and she was amazingly pleased to see the dog's hideous face with the drooling, undershot jaw. Ariel barked. Flip sat up; then, as Ariel waited quietly, she stood up, and looked around, but she could see no sign of the boy she had met down by the lake on the morning of the day she came to school. "Paul!" she called, but there was no answer except from Ariel, who barked again, caught hold of her skirt, released it, bounded up the mountain, then came back and took her skirt in his teeth again. "But I can't go with you, Ariel," she said. "I have to go back to school." Ariel barked and tried again to lure her up the mountain. "I have to go, Ariel," she told him. "I'm sure I'm out of bounds or something, being here. I have to go back to school." Then she laughed at the serious way in which she had been trying to explain to the bulldog, turned away from him, and started back down the mountain. But Ariel pranced along beside her, always trying to head her back up the mountain, catching hold of her skirt or the hem of her coat, tugging and pulling, gently, but persistently. "Ariel, you can't come back to school with me, you just can't!" Flip tried to push the dog away but he barked, reached up, and caught hold of the cuff of her sleeve. "Oh, Ariel!" she cried, half exasperated, half pleased because she knew the dog was going to win. "All right!" And she turned around and headed back up the mountain.