The morning was cool, the blue of the sky vast, tender, noble. Rain during the night had left the atmosphere fresh and clear and the pike dustless. Little knobs of the bluish limestone jutted out. The greyish grass and weeds on each side had been washed till they looked green again. The pike climbed a hill and from this hilltop he turned and looked back. He could see the packed outskirts of the city and away over in the heart of it church spires rising here and there. The heart of it had once been the green valley through which a stream of the wilderness ran: there Wilson had seen the water mills and the gallows for hanging Kentuckians and the thousand hitched horses and folks sitting on the public square selling cakes of maple sugar and split squirrels. Soon he passed the pasture where he had spent yesterday. That had done well enough as a beginning: today he would go further. He remembered many things he had seen in the park-like bluegrass woods. Sweet to his ear sounded the call of bobwhite from the yellow grain. He wondered whether the ailing young crows in the tree-tops had at last taken all their medicine. The curious bird which had watched him out of a hole in the tree-trunk--the chap with the black band across his chest and the speckled jacket and the red cap on the back of his head, was he still on the lookout? What had become of the gorgeous little velvet coach that had travelled across the back of his hand on its unknown road? And that mystery of the high leaves--that wandering disembodied voice: _Se-u-re? Se-u-u._ Did it still haunt the waving boughs? But miles on ahead in the country, undergrowth, shade, secrecy for wild creatures--his heart leaped forward to these and his feet hastened. This day with both eyes open, not shut in sleep, he might find the warbler. Whole-heartedly, with a boy's eagerness, Webster suddenly took off his hat and ran down the middle of the gleaming white turnpike toward the green forest--toward all, whether much or little, that he was ever to be. [Illustration: chapter V--end decoration] [Illustration: logo--Country Life Press] THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N.Y.