There was once a road through the woods.

"'Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate
(They fear not men in the woods
Because they see so few),
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods. . . .
But there is no road through the woods.'"


"I don't like that at all," cried the soldierman. "It's too--too
sad--it doesn't give you any encouragement. The way it ends, I
mean: 'But there is no road through the woods.' Of course there's
a road! For us there always will be. I'm going to make sure. I'm
going to buy those woods, and keep the lost road where we can
always find it."

"I don't think," said the girl, "that he means a real road."

"I know what he means," cried the lover, "and he's wrong! There
is a road, and you and I have found it, and we are going to
follow it for always."