60 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
did not the tree-tops sway instead of standing in 
frozen rows? The sky above was the color of the 
eggs of the wood thrush, a tender blue faintly washed 
with white. As the sun rose higher and higher, the 
color deepened to that bluest of blues which burns 
in May under the breast of the brooding catbird. 
Filtered through frost, the sunlight shone, intensely 
bright but without heat. The air was full of the 
spicery of a million pine trees. With every breath 
it went tingling through my blood, carrying with it 
the joy of the open and the freedom of the barrens. 
At last I came to the cabin. It is set on the very 
edge of the brownest, crookedest, sweetest stream in 
the world — the cedar-stained Rancocas. The wide 
porch cverhangs the water, and over the doorway is a 
tiny horseshoe, which was dug out of the bog at 
Upper Mill, undoubtedly cast by some fairy steed. 
One whole side of the cabin is taken up by an arched 
fireplace built of brown and yellow and red sand- 
stone, the only stone that can be found in the Barrens. 
Squat and curly, two massive andirons, hammered 
out of bog iron, stand among the ashes. They have 
a story all their own. 
Five miles through the woods is Upper Mill, 
which is not a mill at all, but marks the place where, 
a century ago, one stood. The only occupied house 
there is a log cabin built of imperishable white- 
cedar logs in 1720, the date still showing on one of 
the logs. Charlie Rogers lives there alone. It used 
to be an old tavern on the cattle-road from Perth 
Amboy. Every now and then Charlie finds old coins, 
