On the road to Surfside on the south shore of Nantucket there was a stretch of low pine woods where the twins and Erica had been in the habit of foraging each year for their Christmas trees. The wind swept over the island with such constant violence that it stunted even the pines growing on the commons. They looked like trees in Japanese prints, little and twisted, with writhing branches stretching out away from the blast. Where the pines were massed closely together, however, as in these woody patches, they were straighter, less tortured by sea winds, though even there they were dwarf trees. Erica had always loved the clean, pungent fragrance of that pine woods, and she delighted in the gray-feathered, short-eared owls, with their wise little cat faces and stealthy mothlike flight, who lived in the green dimness of its piny aisles. Sometimes on a walk she had started up more than a dozen of the creatures in a single afternoon. And in spite of Lis’s and Tommy’s loud-voiced amusement, she had named that particular stretch of woods on the Surfside road, the “Owls’ Country.” She used to wonder, whimsically, whether the owls ever guessed that the twins and she robbed their country of two of the biggest and branchiest trees each December, to hang their Christmas packages and candles on. And whether that would serve as an excuse for breaking into the quiet of the grove, and putting the owls to the trouble of removing their stately selves from one tree to another. Sometimes the owls scolded noisily when they were disturbed, and always they stared down their curved, horny beaks superciliously at the intruders, from a safe distance. Lis was not here to go tree-hunting this year, and partly because Erica felt instinctively that Tommy and she would miss him more if there were only two of them, partly because Tommy’s reknit leg was not yet quite up to all the demands such an expedition would put upon it, she suggested making a party of the occasion and including half a dozen or more young folks. So Mollie Macy and her brothers, Jud and Alex, were invited to join them, with Martin and Lilla Joy, the two fat Covington boys, and Sara Anne Gardener. The day before Christmas, Tommy harnessed his mother’s sedate brown mare, Polly, to the ancient springless cart that was used for hauling barrels of flour and apples from market, and for bringing in loads of potatoes, garden truck, and fragrant summer hay from the Folger farm out Madaket way. This farm belonged to Miss Charity, Mrs. Callie Folger and Captain Eric jointly, and was managed for them by a capable farmer named Amos Brett. Tommy drove, since his leg was not strong enough for long walks, and the girls bundled into the cart behind him, sitting on a pile of hay spread out on the bare floor-boards. The other boys tramped alongside, finding no difficulty in keeping up with old Polly’s sober pace.