"The bottom is soft. We'd sink to the knees." Finally they struck into the old road where the going was easy. They could walk abreast. "When Dad sells wood they haul the logs down here to the water's edge and float them out to the bay at high tide," said Pen. She warned him to avoid the paler spots in the road. These were patches of sand. "Doesn't matter so much if they find my tracks," she said, "anybody around here would tell them that I am always wandering." It was a hot still night with distant lightning. Something seemed to press down upon them from above. The woodsy smell compounded of leaf mold and pine needles was extraordinarily pungent. The silence under the trees was absolute. Not a leaf rustled, not a bird cheeped, not an insect strummed. Only when they paused to rest could they hear little stealthy stirrings in the mold. "Mink or weasel," said Pen. Though they had now put their enemies far behind them, out of respect for the great silence they still talked in murmurs. The wild creatures were less sensitive. Once they heard quite close the sharp bark of a fox, and again from farther away a wild laugh came ringing. "What's that?" asked Don startled. "Loon," said Pen. "There's another pond in that direction." Little by little they became one with the night and the wildness; their worldly concerns slipped off; their breasts were light. It was enough merely to smell and to hear; to stretch their muscles. "Why do people live in houses?" said Don. "Poor things! They know no better," said Pen. More than once the road forked but Pen always made her choice unhesitatingly. "How can you be so sure in the dark?" he asked. "I just have a general notion," she laughed. "We couldn't go far wrong. The Bay is on one side of us, the fields on the other." After a long walk they came suddenly to the edge of the woods. A rail fence divided woodland and clearing. There was a barred opening into the field. Pen dropped her bag on the other side and vaulted over like a boy. Don more heavily encumbered had to climb over. On the other side some dim shapes rose awkwardly in the grass and trotted away. "My sheep," said Pen. "I know where we are. I mended that fence myself to keep them from straying." At one step they had entered the civilized world again. Up the river the steamboat blew for a wharf, and they could hear from far-off the barking of a dog, and all those vague little sounds that rise from a peopled land at night. The field was populous with crickets and the wide space was made lovely by myriad fire-flies floating about like vagrant stars. The field was a broad one, and the going rough underfoot. Young pine trees were springing up everywhere. "Hanged if I know where I am," said Don. "We're facing north now," said Pen. "That pale glow in the clouds is the reflection of the lights of Washington, seventy miles from here." "Fancy the Nation's capital ... and this!" said Don.