“Apples are apples,” quoth Sim. “Why should we go to the far end to gather fine fruit when windfalls may answer?”
“Why, indeed,” assented Arden. “But still I suppose we had better not pick up these.” With her foot she kicked out from amid the fallen leaves some withered, wrinkled, and partly rotted specimens.
“No, they won’t do,” declared Sim.
“Then let’s separate a bit. We can cover more ground that way,” suggested Arden. “Whoever first finds some decent apples must give a shout, and we’ll gather there.” She was quite businesslike.
“All right, Colonel!” laughed Terry. “‘You take the highland and I’ll take the low,’” she sang softly. “Scatter, my lassies!”
They separated and began the search in the growing dusk.
Apples there were, but such poor things, windfalls and rots, that even the enthusiastic Arden began to feel discouraged. They might, after all, need to go to the far end of the orchard. Still, it was delightful beneath the old, gnarled trees. Their trunks were shaped like dragons, their branches like Chinese letters, and the roots, where they cropped out above the ground, like intertwined serpents grim and black, seeming to writhe in the shifting shadows. A little wind rustled the leaves, swung the hanging fruit, and made the limbs squeak as they rubbed one on the other.
Here and there they wandered, growing more and more apprehensive and nervous as the darkness deepened. There seemed to be something sinister about that orchard, although it was so close to the life and joy of Cedar Ridge College. The taxi-man had surely warned them—but of what? This was no time to think about that.
“Ah!” Sim suddenly exclaimed. “A perfect apple, red and round!” She picked it up from beneath a large gnarled tree. “And there are others,” she called. “This way! Over here, girls!” Her voice was joyous.
Arden and Terry ran toward Sim. But as Sim stooped to pick up another apple she saw something in a pile of leaves. It looked like—surely not the leg of blue overalls! A last lingering gleam of the setting sun, shining through a cleft in the hills, glinted upon that leg. Sim glided closer. Could it be——?