Three hundred and sixty-four days of that year Saw-miller Pike, his wife, his four children, and his hired man, one or all of them, were on that spot; their one absence chance decreed should be on this particular August Thursday when Anne Douglas came there to spend the day. She was not afraid; it was a quiet rural neighborhood without beggars or tramps. Her grandaunt would not return until sunset. She decided to look for the fern, and if she found it within an hour or two, to walk home, and send a boy back on horseback to wait for Miss Vanhorn. If she did not find it before afternoon, she would wait for the carriage, according to agreement. Hanging her basket and shawl on a tree branch near the mill, she entered the ravine, and was soon hidden in its green recesses. Up and down, up and down the steep rocky sides she climbed, her tin case swinging from her shoulder, her trowel in her belt; she neglected no spot, and her track, if it had been visible, would have shown itself almost as regular as the web of the geometric spider. Up and down, up and down, from the head of the ravine to its foot on one side: nothing. It seemed to her that she had seen the fronds and curled crosiers of a thousand ferns. Her eyes were tired, and she threw herself down on a mossy bank not far from the mill to rest a moment. There was no use in looking at the watch; still, she did it, and decided that it was either half past eleven or half past three. The remaining side of the ravine gazed at her steadily; she knew that she must clamber over every inch of those rocks also. She sighed, bathed her flushed cheeks in the brook, took down her hair, and braided it in two long school-girl braids, which hung down below her waist; then she tied her straw hat to a branch, pinned her neck-tie on the brim, took off her linen cuffs, and laid them within together with her gloves, and leaving the tin plant case and the trowel on the bank, started on her search. Up and down, up and down, peering into every cranny, standing on next to nothing, swinging herself from rock to rock; making acquaintance with several very unpleasant rock spiders, and hastily constructing bridges for them of small twigs, so that they could cross from her skirt to their home ledge in safety; finding a trickling spring, and drinking from it; now half way down the ravine, now three-quarters; and still no walking-leaf. She sat down on a jutting crag to take breath an instant, and watched a bird on a tree branch near by. He was one of those little brown songsters that sing as follows: [Illustration: Musical notation] Seeing her watching him, he now chanted his little anthem in his best style. "Very well," said Anne, aloud. "Oh no; only so-so," said a voice below. She looked down, startled, It was Ward Heathcote. [Illustration: "SHE BATHED HER FLUSHED CHEEK."] CHAPTER XIV. "From beginning to end it was all undeniable nonsense; but not necessarily the worse for that."--NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.