“Never mind,” said Miss Jule, “this is a hen picnic; but when I was a girl we seldom had any other kind hereabouts, and yet we always had plenty of fun. I think that you girls had better ride your wheels until we come to the long hill, or else pack them into the other wagon; for with all these fishing-rods and things the brake will be full.” The dogs had to be tied up and stay at home; for taking dogs who love to swim on a fishing excursion is a “mustn’t be.” Mr. Hugh’s new land was a strip of several hundred acres of wild meadows, bordered by thick woods that joined his farm and followed the river quite to the Pine Ridge waterfall. It had once been a farm; for in open places the hummocks under the rough grass told where cornfields had been. There were two tumble-down orchards (one of early and one of late apples), while raspberry vines, a ruined chimney, and tufts, here and there, of old-fashioned flowers told of a home that had gone. The woods that bordered the river were very wild and fascinating, deep shade being made by oaks, beeches, and giant hemlocks. No trees had been cut for many years, though the dead wood had evidently been carefully cleared away. There were great rocks covered with ferns that sloped to the river edge, where the water had whirled stone within stone and worn “pot-holes” and carved many strange devices. The Willoughby girls were in ecstasies, for most of their summers had been spent by the sea. Elsa, the eldest, soon chose a bit for a sketch; Martica, who was a junior at Vassar, discovered material for a thesis on ferns; Louise, the youngest, set about picking delicious looking blackberries, that though now growing wild must have been the grandchildren of the fruit of the old garden. Thus it came to be that Miss Jule, Letty, Anne, and May Willoughby formed the fishing party; for no one cared to shoot at a target without Mr. Hugh to keep score and praise or criticise their shots. The pond was a little way up the stream, from which it was separated by a sloping stone dam that extended like a wall for fifty feet around the north side, and being overhung with trees made a fine place from which to fish. The hooks were baited and dropped in the water, and then Anne began to look about as if to locate herself, saying: “I thought I knew every bit of woods within miles of home, but I’ve never been on this side of the river just here. When Obi was our garden boy he and I used to go a great deal to the old mill on the other side of the pond where the wood-ducks nested; but once when we came across the dam, close by where we are now, and dug some wild sarsaparilla, an old woman with a crutch came out of the trees and chased us away. “Obi said that she was called the Herb Witch, and that she lived in a hut somewhere in the woods, and gathered weeds and things, that she sold to make magic medicines, and that we had better not cross her, because she could poison people by even breathing at them.