behind the trees." 

 "Indeed?" said the young man. His tone was preoccupied. He had just kicked a rock, hidden by the leaves, and was standing on one leg. 

 "Do you mean you don't believe me?" asked the girl, "or is it that you are merely brave?" 

 "Merely brave!" exclaimed the young man. "Massachusetts is so far north for lions," he continued, "that I fancy what you saw was a grizzly bear. But I have my trusty electric torch with me, and if there is anything a bear cannot abide, it is to be pointed at by an electric torch." 

 "Let us pretend," cried the girl, "that we are the babes in the wood, and that we are lost." 

 "We don't have to pretend we're lost," said the man, "and as I remember it, the babes came to a sad end. Didn't they die, and didn't the birds bury them with leaves?" 

 "Sam and Mr. Peabody can be the birds," suggested the girl. 

 "Sam and Peabody hopping around with leaves in their teeth would look silly," objected the man, "I doubt if I could keep from laughing." 

 "Then," said the girl, "they can be the wicked robbers who came to kill the babes." 

 "Very well," said the man with suspicious alacrity, "let us be babes. If I have to die," he went on heartily, "I would rather die with you than live with any one else." 

 When he had spoken, although they were entirely alone in the world and quite near to each other, it was as though the girl could not hear him, even as though he had not spoken at all. After a silence, the girl said:  "Perhaps it would be better for us to go back to the car." 

 "I won't do it again," begged the man. 

 "We will pretend," cried the girl, "that the car is a van and that we are gypsies, and we'll build a campfire, and I will tell your fortune." 

 "You are the only woman who can," muttered the young man. 

 The girl still stood in her tracks. 

 "You said—" she began. 

 "I know," interrupted the man, "but you won't let me talk seriously, so I joke. But some day——" 

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