"It's partly that," said Tom, "and partly the cold weather that is responsible for my good behavior two thirds of the year. If I lived in a warm climate all the year around, every respectable notion I had would melt away in a week and I'd take to the open forever." "I have never been in the woods in the winter time," said Anne. "Are they very beautiful?" "One of the finest sights in the world," cried Tom enthusiastically, his wholesome face glowing from his exercise. Just then they climbed an old stone wall and entered a forest known as "Upton Wood," which covered an area of ten miles or more in length and several miles across. "It is beautiful," said Anne as she gazed up and down the wooded aisles carpeted in white. "It is like a great cathedral. I could almost kneel and pray at one of these snow covered stumps. They are like altars." "The fault I find with the woods in winter," observed Grace, "is that there is nothing to do in them, no birds and beasts to make things lively, no flowers to pick, no brooks to wade in. Just an everlasting stillness." "I admit there's not much social life," replied Tom. "The inhabitants either go to sleep or fly south, most of them. But don't forget the rabbits and squirrels and----" "And an occasional bear," interrupted Reddy. "They have been seen in these parts." "Worse than bears," said Hippy. "Wolves!" "Goodness!" ejaculated Tom. "You are doing pretty well. I didn't know this country was so wild. But that's going some." "Oh, well, as to that," said David, "nobody has ever really seen anything worse than wildcats, and we have to take old Jean's word for it about the wolves. He claimed to have seen wolves in these woods three years ago. As a matter of fact they chased him out, and he was obliged to turn civilized for three months." "Who is old Jean?" asked Tom, much interested. "He is a French-Canadian hunter who has lived somewhere in this forest for years. He comes into town occasionally, looking like Daniel Boone, dressed in skins with a squirrel cap, and carrying a bunch of rabbits that he sells to the butchers." "He's a great sight," said Grace. "I saw him on his snowshoes one day. He was coming down Upton Hill, where we coasted, you know, Anne, and he sped along the fields faster than David's motor cycle." They had been walking for some time over the hard-packed snow and were now well into the forest, which hemmed them in on every side and seemed to stretch out in all directions into infinite space. "Reddy, are you perfectly sure we won't get lost in this place?" demanded Jessica at last. They had been walking along silently intent on their own thoughts. Perhaps it was the grandeur of the great snow-laden trees that oppressed them; perhaps the vast loneliness of the place, where nothing was stirring, not even a rabbit.