"Winifred! Winifred!"
"That is Mother calling," she exclaimed aloud, springing to her feet, and resting one hand against the smooth trunk of the pine tree. For a moment she was too surprised and sleepy to respond to the call; then she called back, "Mother! I'm in the woods!" at the same time moving slowly around to the other side of the big tree.
"Oh! There's a light! And there's the road! And there is Mother!" and stumbling and running Winifred appeared in the road only a short distance from the flickering light of the lantern.
"Mother! Mother! Did you come all alone?" called Winifred, as her mother held her close as if, thought the little girl, "I had been away a long time."
"I thought I was way in the deep woods, and I was close to the road all the time. But Fluff is lost," she explained, as her mother led her toward the cart.
"No, dear; Fluff passed us on our way home, and will probably be safe in his stall long before we get back," replied Mrs. Merrill, and as they drove through the darkness she told her little daughter of how troubled she and Mrs. Pennell had been as the afternoon passed and Winifred and Ruth failed to return; of Gilbert borrowing Ned's pony, of meeting Ruth, "and I have been here an hour, calling and calling," she concluded.
"How sound asleep I must have been not to hear you," said Winifred happily, snuggling closer to her mother's side.
"After Fluff ran off I began to be frightened," she continued. "I thought of catamounts and bears; and then I thought of my sampler."
"Your sampler?" repeated Mrs. Merrill, not understanding just what Winifred meant.
"Yes, Mother dear! Don't you remember the words you traced on it? 'There shall no evil befall thee. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways,'" repeated the little girl. "I kept saying it over and over and I was not afraid."