“If there was a sign of any one--” said Betty aloud, as she broke off suddenly and stood still by the fence trying to think out the idea that had come to her. “Why,” she went on, “I said the word ‘sign,’ and I never realized that it’s a Guide word. Eve was talking about ‘sign’ at the Guiding lesson. She was showing us how to track snails by the ‘sign’ of their silvery trails in the garden. She told me to remember the story of Hop o’ my Thumb, too, and his ‘sign’ that he laid down so that his brothers should find their way home. And one minute ago I was saying there might be ‘sign’ here. I know what I shall do!” She did it, too. Why not? She was over the fence at once. After all, she had an hour to spare, and the girls had told her that the school wood was not forbidden. They had said that they often went there, and although Betty herself had entered into her third week at St. Benedick’s without as yet visiting the wood herself, yet that was only because there had been so many other things to do. Now the moment had come, however. She clambered over the fence and reached the other side, intent on discovering whether there really was a “piper of dreams.” The tracking of “sign” is not easy for a beginner--especially alone and in the deepness of a wood. In the Guiding lesson over which Eve had presided the older girl had helped the younger ones more than Betty had realized until she started off on this quest of her own. Also being on the tiptoe of excitement, and forgetting to “hasten slowly,” she was inclined to jump to conclusions too readily. She took a lightning glance round. “If somebody’s been, where did they come from? Have they left any tracks? If so, I’ve got to find them. That’s the sort of thing Eve would say,” she told herself. Then she stood still for a moment, and certainly noticed that close under the fence, in the shadow of a tree trunk, there was a heap of leaves which had recently been disturbed. This might be “sign,” she thought eagerly. The leaves seemed pressed down, as though some one might have been crouching there--a wild thing of the wood, perhaps. Betty was off and away, taking her path through the trees. Once among them, however, she lost all trace of more “sign.” The wood seemed bigger, too, than she had expected when once she had got beyond the first beeches past a clearing which was carpeted with beech mast, and then to a grove of trees beyond. As the others said, the school wood seemed to have no approach from the road at all. Behind her, as she knew, were the school grounds; but, if she had not known they were so close, she would have felt herself very far indeed from any human habitation in the stillness of the wood.