She seemed to be trying to remember.
"Come now," he teased, "don't tell me you don't believe they have a mother! The eldest child is not yet six, and the youngest of the five is two months old!"
She laughed and gave in. "No, I have not seen the mother, nor the father, nor the aunts, nor any of the rest of the family! But that is only one instance."
"There are many; you really may take my word for it, if it interests you to. But if you were to be here after the summer people go, then you'd see. They come out into the open then."
She still looked skeptical, and he pointed up the mountain. "Do you see that path?" he asked.
"No. Where?"
He laughed. "Caught, Miss Randall! A path is there, invisible though it is to you—to us. All through these woods there are paths, often little more than trails, well known to the mountaineers and often used. Sometimes they run for a mile or more beside the road, screened by the undergrowth; sometimes they keep higher up, or cross where a road could not, or follow the courses of the streams; but they are there. It is only one of the evidences of the mountaineers' secretiveness."
"Your simile was a good one! What animals they are!"
"So are we all."
"Oh, of course, you are the doctor, saying that! But you could scarcely class these creatures with ourselves!"