know what you was after--but did you see any signs up thar of
anything you wasn't looking fer?"

Hale laughed.

"Well, I've been in these mountains long enough not to tell you,
if I had."

The Red Fox chuckled.

"I wasn't sure you had--" Hale coughed and spat to the other side
of his horse. When he looked around, the Red Fox was gone, and he
had heard no sound of his going.

"Well, I be--" Hale clucked to his horse and as he climbed the
last steep and drew near the Big Pine he again heard a noise out
in the woods and he knew this time it was the fall of a human foot
and not of a hickory nut. He was right, and, as he rode by the
Pine, saw again at its base the print of the little girl's foot--
wondering afresh at the reason that led her up there--and dropped
down through the afternoon shadows towards the smoke and steam and
bustle and greed of the Twentieth Century. A long, lean, black-
eyed boy, with a wave of black hair over his forehead, was pushing
his horse the other way along the Big Black and dropping down
through the dusk into the Middle Ages--both all but touching on
either side the outstretched hands of the wild little creature
left in the shadows of Lonesome Cove.