The sun rose higher and higher. But the thick branching trees kept off the heat, and the wood remained shady and cool. The paths twisted in and out, and looped into each other like a tangled riband. No grown person could have kept a straight course in their mazes. Archie did not even try, but turned to right or to left just as it happened, taking always the path which looked prettiest, or which led into deepest shade. If he saw anywhere a particularly red checkerberry, he went that way; otherwise it was all one to him where he went. So it came to pass that, by the end of an hour, he was as delightfully and completely lost as ever little boy has succeeded in being since woods grew or the world was made.
"I dess this is a nice place for my house," he said suddenly, as the path he had been following led into a small open space, across which lay a fallen tree, with gray moss, which looked like hair, hanging to its trunk. It was a nice place; also, Archie's feet were tired, and he was growing hungry, which aided in the decision. The ground about the fallen tree was carpeted with thick mosses. Some were bright green, with stems and little branches like tiny, tiny pine-trees. Others had horn-shaped cups of yellow and fiery red. Others still were bright beautiful brown, while here and there stood round cushion-shaped masses which looked as soft as down.
Into the very middle of one of these pretty green cushions plumped Archie. He rested his back against a tree trunk, and gave a sigh of comfort. It was like an easy chair, except that it had no arms; but what does a little boy want of arms to chairs? He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out, first the red apples, and then the gingerbread. The gingerbread was rather mashed; but it tasted most delicious, only there was too little of it.
"I wish I'd brought a hundred more pieces," soliloquized Archie, as he nibbled the last crumb. "One isn't half enough bekfast."
The red apples, however, proved a consolation; and, quite rested and refreshed now, he jumped from the moss cushion and prepared to begin his house-building.
"First, I must pick up some sticks," he thought,—"a great many, many sticks, heaps of 'em. Then I'll hammer and make a house. Only—I haven't got any nails," he added with an after-thought.
There were plenty of sticks to be had in that part of the wood; twigs and branches from the dead tree, fragments of bark, odds and ends of dry brush. Close by stood a white birch. The thin, paper-like covering hung loose on its stem, like grey-white curls. Archie could pull off large pieces, and he enjoyed this so much that he pulled till the birch trunk, as far up as he could reach, was perfectly bare. Some of the boughs were crooked. Archie tried to lay them straight with the others, but they wouldn't fit in nicely, and stuck their stiff angles out in all directions.
"Those are naughty sticks," said Archie, giving the crookedest a shove. "They shan't go into my house at all."
The want of nails became serious as the heap of wood grew large and Archie was ready to build. What was the use of a hammer without nails? He tried various ways. At last he laid the longest boughs in a row against the side of the fallen tree. This left a little place beneath their slope into which it was possible to creep. Archie smiled with satisfaction, and proceeded to thatch the sloping roof with moss and bits of bark. Then he grubbed up the green cushion and transferred it bodily to his house.
"This'll be my chair," he said to himself. "I dess I don't want any more furnture except just a chair. Loo—isa, she said, 'so many things to dust is a bodder.'"