On top of the spur Jason halted. A warm blue haze transfused with
the slanting sunlight overlay the flanks of the mountains which,
fold after fold, rippled up and down the winding river and above
the green crests billowed on and on into the unknown. Nothing more
could happen to them if they went home two hours later than would
surely happen if they went home now, the boy thought, and he did
not want to go home now. For a moment he stood irresolute, and
then, far down the river, he saw two figures on horseback come
into sight from a strip of woods, move slowly around a curve of
the road, and disappear into the woods again.

One rode sidewise, both looked absurdly small, and even that far
away the boy knew them for strangers. He did not call Mavis's
attention to them--he had no need--for when he turned, her face
showed that she too had seen them, and she was already moving
forward to go with him down the spur. Once or twice, as they went
down, each glimpsed the coming "furriners" dimly through the
trees; they hurried that they might not miss the passing, and on a
high bank above the river road they stopped, standing side by
side, the eyes of both fixed on the arched opening of the trees
through which the strangers must first come into sight. A ringing
laugh from the green depths heralded their coming, and then in the
archway were framed a boy and a girl and two ponies--all from
another world. The two watchers stared silently--the boy noting
that the other boy wore a cap and long stockings, the girl that a
strange hat hung down the back of the other girl's head--stared
with widening eyes at a sight that was never for them before. And
then the strangers saw them--the boy with his bow and arrow, the
girl with a fishing-pole--and simultaneously pulled their ponies