“I’m not going to discuss it,” he told Miss Pauline. “You know how set on this trip those kids are. I couldn’t take it away from them.”

“But Mr. Heath is one of your best clients,” she said. “He pays good money, and there’s always a bonus. Besides, the sugarbowl’s nearly empty. We could use the extra money this winter, Michael.”

“We’ll make do for the winter,” he said. “I told you, I’m not going to argue. If we run short later on, I’ll go down to Speculator and hire out for wages. But I won’t go back on my word about the trip.”

She knew when to stop pushing, and did.

The days were long now. In the daylight still left after school, Tim and I explored the woods near the cabin. We were excited about the canoe trip, but that was a week away, forever in our children’s sense of time.

This was the autumn that we first really investigated the fuzzy bear caterpillars. It seemed that as the winter approached, each caterpillar caught a bad case of itchy feet. And since each had a hundred feet, the itching must have been tremendous. The fuzzy bears were all over, engaged in some private migration to a destination known only to them. Nothing would lead them astray. Tim and I picked up dozens, whirled them in circles, carried them down the road hundreds of yards from their original location—and when we put each fuzzy bear back on the ground, it would twist its wooly head in a circle, unlimber its soft body, and point itself toward where it had been going in the first place. We put one in a cardboard box and shook it up until it couldn’t have known which way was up, and soon as it was secure on the ground, it reoriented itself and set off toward its goal again.

“I think he’s got a compass built into his head,” Tim said.

“That’s silly, he’s only a caterpillar.”

“All right, Miss Smarty. How do you explain how he knows where he’s going?”

“He doesn’t. He’s just crossing the road.”

“But you can’t get him mixed up. He always crosses it in the same direction.”

“Maybe he memorized that big oak tree over there.”

“Then how come he still crosses the same direction when we take him down by the pond? There aren’t any trees at all across the road there.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well, I do,” said Tim. “He’s got a compass in his head.”

Like I said, there was no arguing with Tim. When he thought he was right, he would never admit that he was wrong, even when the evidence went straight against him.

That night my father sat us down after supper and talked for a while about going out in the woods and getting lost.

“Tim can’t get lost. He’s got a compass in his head, just like that fuzzy ol’ bear caterpillar.”