Prince suddenly bounded away, barking, down a pleasant glade, through the bottom of which flowed a brook. Carolyn May caught a glimpse of something brown moving down there, and she called shrilly to the dog to come back. “But that’s _some_body, Uncle Joe” Carolyn May said with assurance, as the dog slowly returned. “Prince never barks like that, unless it’s a person. And I saw something move.” “Somebody taking a walk, like us. Couldn’t be a deer,” said Mr. Stagg. “Oh,” cried Carolyn May a moment later, “I see it again. That’s a skirt I see. Why, it’s a lady!” Mr. Stagg suddenly grew very stern-looking, as well as silent. All the beauty of the day and of the glade they had entered seemed lost on him. He went on stubbornly, yet as though loath to proceed. “Why,” murmured Carolyn May, “it’s Miss Amanda Parlow! That’s just who it is!” The carpenter’s daughter was sitting on a bare brown log by the brook. She was dressed very prettily, all in brown. Carolyn May had seen her that day in church in this same pretty dress. For some weeks Miss Amanda had been away “on a case.” Carolyn May knew that she was a trained nurse and was often away from home weeks at a time. Mr. Parlow had told her about it. The little girl wanted to speak to the pretty Miss Amanda, but she looked again into Uncle Joe’s countenance and did not dare. CHAPTER XI—A CANINE INTERVENTION Carolyn May wanted _awfully_ to speak to Miss Amanda. The brown lady with the pretty roses in her cheeks sat on the log by the brook, her face turned from the path Joseph Stagg and his little niece were coming along. She must have known they were coming down the glade and who they were, for nobody could mistake the identity of Prince, and the dog would not be out in the woods with anybody but his little mistress. Miss Parlow, however, kept her face steadily turned in the opposite direction. And Uncle Joe was quite as stubborn. He stared straight ahead down the path without letting the figure on the log get into the focus of his vision. Carolyn May did not see how it was possible for two people who loved each other, or who ever had loved each other, to act so. They must have thought a great deal of each other once upon a time, for Chet Gormley’s mother had said so. The very fact that they now acted as they did proved to the observant child that the situation was not normal. She wanted to seize Uncle Joe’s hand and whisper to him how pretty Miss Amanda looked. She wanted to run to the lady and talk to her. Thus far she had found little opportunity for knowing Miss Amanda Parlow well, although Carolyn May and the old carpenter were now very good friends. Hanging to Uncle Joe’s hand, but looking longingly at the silent figure on the log, Carolyn May was going down to the stepping-stones by which they were to cross the brook, when, suddenly, Prince came to a halt right at the upper end of the log and his body stiffened. “What is it, Prince?” whispered his little mistress. “Come here.”