Again they went through the business of packing up. In a few minutes they were ready to start. With Don's flashlight Pen searched all about the clearing to make sure that no evidence of his sojourn had been left there. Don made a bundle of his tent and tied it on his back. He took his grub-basket in his hand, and stuck his hatchet in his belt. Pen stuffed his bundle of clothes into the grass bag with the things she had brought. They started down to the water's edge.
Don's spirits instantly began to rise. "I feel like a human being again," he said. "Instead of a caged rat."
From the spring Pen struck into the underbrush, using Don's flashlight to pick her way slowly and cautiously through the tangle. A few yards back from the water's edge it was more open.
"We'll leave a wide open track behind us here," she said, "but I don't suppose those New York detectives are very good woodsmen."
"Why couldn't we wade around the edge of the pond?" he asked.
"The bottom is soft. We'd sink to the knees."
Finally they struck into the old road where the going was easy. They could walk abreast.
"When Dad sells wood they haul the logs down here to the water's edge and float them out to the bay at high tide," said Pen.
She warned him to avoid the paler spots in the road. These were patches of sand. "Doesn't matter so much if they find my tracks," she said, "anybody around here would tell them that I am always wandering."
It was a hot still night with distant lightning. Something seemed to press down upon them from above. The woodsy smell compounded of leaf mold and pine needles was extraordinarily pungent. The silence under the trees was absolute. Not a leaf rustled, not a bird cheeped, not an insect strummed. Only when they paused to rest could they hear little stealthy stirrings in the mold.
Though they had now put their enemies far behind them, out of respect for the great silence they still talked in murmurs. The wild creatures were less sensitive. Once they heard quite close the sharp bark of a fox, and again from farther away a wild laugh came ringing.
"Loon," said Pen. "There's another pond in that direction."
Little by little they became one with the night and the wildness; their worldly concerns slipped off; their breasts were light. It was enough merely to smell and to hear; to stretch their muscles.