Raggylug 



one followed the shining beacon of her snow- 

 white tail until she led him to a safe corner of 

 the Swamp. 



II 



Old Olifant's Swamp was a rough, brambly 

 tract of second-growth woods, with a marshy 

 pond and a stream through the middle. A few 

 ragged remnants of the old forest still stood 

 in it and a few of the still older trunks were 

 lying about as dead logs in the brushwood. 

 The land about the pond was of that willow- 

 grown sedgy kind that cats and horses avoid, 

 but that cattle do not fear. The drier zones 

 were overgrown with briars and young trees. 

 The outermost belt of all, that next the fields, 

 was of thrifty, gummy - trunked young pines 

 whose living needles in air and dead ones on 

 earth offer so delicious an odor to the nostrils 

 of the passer-by, and so deadly a breath to 

 those seedlings that would compete with them 

 for the worthless waste they grow on. 



All around for a long way were smooth 

 fields, and the only wild tracks that ever crossed 



ioo 



