“Singing!” he cried, fiercely “Don’t be so sure you’ll ‘win to-day.’ You can’t tell. Anyhow, I hope you won’t! I hope you’ll be beaten out of your boots!”
He sat there and watched till the buckboard disappeared along with the brown road that had run to a hiding place amid the woods and hills. Even then he did not stir, but long after that he remained on the ledge, yet without deriving any pleasure from the beauty of the scene spread out before him in all the enchanting colors which a river-threaded, lake-dotted, sea-edged landscape reveals beneath the midday sun of early autumn.
At last he left the ledge and came slowly down the mountain. He did not follow the path all the way to the foot of the descent, but turned to the left, skirting the base of Round Stone Cliff, where pleasure-seekers had sent great stones shooting and bounding down the face of the steep declivity, thundering over the lower slope and crashing into the tangled thickets below, tearing crooked paths through the woods to the point where they were piled in confusion into a deep, dark ravine.
What if some unseen person, knowing nothing of his presence below, were to start a huge bowlder rolling from the top of the cliff as he made his way along its base! He thought of that and laughed!
“Let ’em come!” he exclaimed. “I can dodge ’em!”
Nothing of the kind happened, however, which, without doubt, for all of his confidence in his dodging ability, was fortunate for him.
Beyond the cliff, after forcing his way through dense and matted thickets, he came out into the Boxberry Pasture, as it was called by the boys. This was an elevated spot, where he could still look down on the harbor and village. The pasture was a mass of stumps and rocks and knolls, the latter being covered with interwoven vines, which gave to his nostrils the smell of dried checkerberry, plumes of which showed here and there in bright red patches.
Crossing the pasture, he descended to the road that led away to the Powder Mill Woods, where he felt that he might be alone for the afternoon. He hoped that he would not meet on the road any one who knew him, and, to his satisfaction and relief, he did not.
The woods seemed dark and still when he first entered them, and a feeling of loneliness beset him; yet there was a subtle something about the peaceful stillness that soothed his troubled spirit with a gentle suggestion of sadness that, strangely enough, gave him a sensation of enjoyment.
Beneath his feet, where the trees were thick overhead, the ground was damp and yielding, giving his footfall no sound, save when a twig snapped with a muffled noise. The air that he breathed was sweet with the odor of pine and balsam and damp earth. The sunshine did not glare before his eyes, and the dense shadows added to the tranquillity he sought.