In the dense woods the darkness was deeper; indeed they might only know that as yet it was not night by seeing vaguely the burly forms of the great boles close at hand. The shadowy interlacing boughs above their heads merged indistinguishably into the mass of foliage. Every sound was startlingly loud and in the nature of an interruption of some sylvan meditation. The rustle of their feet in the crisp fallen leaves seemed peculiarly sibilant, and more than once suggested a pursuer. Skimpy looked hastily over his shoulder,—only the closing obscurity that baffled his vision. A gust of wind swept through the woods rousing a thousand weird utterances of bough, and leaf, and rock, and hollow, and died away again into the solemn silence. Skimpy quickened his pace. “Kem on, Ike,” he muttered, and started at the sound of his own voice. Suddenly Ike Guyther, without a word of warning, turned about and began to retrace his way. “Whar ye bound fur?” cried Skimpy, laying hold on his arm and striving to keep him back. “Bound fur the Bluffs,” said Ike. “’Twon’t take we-uns long. I jes’ wanter sati’fy myself whether that thar man air too ’feard o’ witches ter water an’ feed his steer at that thar spring ’mongst the rocks nigh Keedon Bluffs.” “_We-uns!_” cried Skimpy. “I tell ye now, I’d be palsied in every toe an’ toe-nail too ’fore I’d go a inch.” “Waal, I’ll ketch up with ye,” said Ike. Skimpy made an effort to hold him, but the stronger boy pulled easily away from him and ran. A whirl of the dry leaves, a whisking sound, and he was lost among the trees. He did not keep this speed. He had slackened his pace to a walk before he emerged upon the road that ran between the verge of the bluffs and the woods. It seemed much earlier now, for here was presented the definite aspect of the evening instead of the uncertain twilight of the forest. In the faint blue regions of the zenith still loitered gauzy roseate reflections of the gorgeous sunset, not yet overspread by the black cloud gradually advancing up the vast spaces of the heavens. The river, in its cliff-bound channel, caught here and there a glittering moonbeam on its lustrous dark current. The amber tints of the western sky shaded into a pallid green above the duskily purple mountains. A pearl-colored mist, most vaguely visible, lurked in the depths of the cove.