Suddenly, it raised itself up to look at the
strange sight, and then bounded away again. The sun dropped lower and
lower. In the open fields there was still light, but the thicket was
gray with the subdued shadows of the gloaming.
John Jay might have slept on all night had not a leaf fluttered slowly
down from the tree above, and brushed across his face. He opened his
eyes, looking all around him in a bewildered way. Then he sat up, and
peered through the bushes. A cold perspiration covered him when he
realized that it was dusk and that he was in the middle of the gander
thicket. He snatched up the blackberries, a pail in each hand, and stood
looking helplessly around him, for he could not decide which way to go.
In front of him stretched half a mile of the haunted thicket. It was
either to push his way through that as quickly as possible, or to go
back by the long, lonesome road over which he had come.
Just then a harmless flock of geese belonging to an old market-gardener
who lived near came waddling up from the creek, on the way home to their
barn-yard.
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