46 FOREST FANCIES 



Uncle Isaac, too, saw Nani vanisK, yet He 

 would not believe his own eyes because he 

 could not explain what he saw. And when 

 Dick sobbed out how Nani had disappeared, 

 Aimt Miranda said decidedly: 



** Reuben Brier, you let them children read 

 too many fairy tales!'' 



But Nani was gone. It was useless to look 

 behind trees or poke bare bushes. Yet to com- 

 fort Dick, his father said that he might go to 

 the sugar camp a few miles away, to see if 

 Nani could be there. 



**She must be a sugar-maker's little lass," 

 said Farmer Brier, '^she was so handy at the 

 sugaring-off." 



So the next day Dick set out to visit the 

 sugar camp near by; and if he had not been 

 so intent upon finding Nani, he would have 

 noticed how here the sap dripped through 

 metal spouts into covered pails. He entered 

 the shelter-building, in which the sap, 

 flowing through a pipe from the storage 

 tank, was boiled over a firebox in a partitioned 

 pan. 



