The mood had lightened. And there was something about a brilliant autumn day like this that called out for adventure, for getting out of the routine. Christina whistled as they pushed their way farther and farther in, then stayed by the brook, watching for a place where they might cross over without getting soaking wet.

“Not many mushrooms this year. It’s been too dry,” Ellen noted.

“Wasn’t there a huge pine just at the start of the trail, along that stone wall?” These were the things one remembered with one’s whole system, Christina was thinking. She would never forget that pine and the shape of its trunk, split about ten feet up into two huge branches; but ask her the name of one of her schoolmates in the seventh grade and she would hesitate. Names and dates flew out of her head these days, and she hardly bothered to try to recapture them.

“Yes, and there it is, if we can get over.”

“There it is!” They felt it as triumph to have come out just right like this, after fifty years or more. “Topped though,” Christina added as she looked up through the great tree and saw its top cracked off, lying caught in the lower branches. “Lightning, I suppose.”

They managed to scramble over the brook, although Christina got one leg pretty wet when she slipped on a wet stone.

“All right? You didn’t hurt your knee?”

“Nope.”

“We follow the stone wall first,” Ellen directed.

“I wonder who cleared all this and dragged those stones and built a wall—not more than a hundred and fifty years ago, but it might as well never have been done. I feel for that man. He must have thought he was building a sure foundation for sons and grandsons—but no doubt they went West, or just petered out, until the homestead rotted back into the woods or burned.”

This outburst was not answered as Ellen, in the lead now, picked her way upwards. If all went well they would reach the great rock from where, if you managed to scramble up, you got an unexpected view of the village, the pond, and, in the distance, all the way to Vermont on a good day. She was animated now by a strong wish to get there, and she was pushing on.

“Hey, wait for me!” Christina called. It was no longer an idle walk, she realized, but an expedition. “Hold your horses, girl, remember you’re with an old lady.” And, indeed, she was out of breath and sat down on a convenient rock when she caught up with Ellen.

“I wonder what Jem will do about the bicentennial. It’s his baby, from what I hear.”

“Oh, he’s only interested in cellar holes and gravestones,” Ellen said contemptuously. “Especially those of his own family.”

“Well, he’s asked me to do a chapter of the history on the women of Willard.”