back to the forest to find our most enduring kinship.”

“Doss,” called her mother from the hall below, “what are you doing all by yourself in that room?”

Valancy dropped Thistle Harvest like a hot coal and fled downstairs to her patches; but she felt the strange exhilaration of spirit that always came momentarily to her when she dipped into one of John Foster’s books. Valancy did not know much about woods — except the haunted groves of oak and pine around her Blue Castle. But she had always secretly hankered after them and a Foster book about woods was the next best thing to the woods themselves.

At noon it stopped raining, but the sun did not come out until three. Then Valancy timidly said she thought she would go uptown.