Thus discoursing, the lovers arrived at the prostrate elm-trunk where they had left their belongings. It looked so familiar and yet so different now, as they stumbled upon it in the darkness, that Wolf received the kind of shock that people get when, after some world-changing adventure, they encounter the reproachful sameness of some well-known aspect of hearth and home. And there was Lob! The boy was crouched in a posture like that of a reproachful goblin. He was engaged in cutting with his pocketknife⁠—in spite of the darkness⁠—deep, jagged incisions in the handle of Wolf’s stick! Much time was to pass before those unevennesses in the handle of that oak cudgel ceased to compel its owner to recall with bittersweet vividness the events of that incredible March Wednesday!

“I know’d you’d go rat-hunting,” was his sulky greeting. Evidently to Lob’s mind no other occupation than this could account for their protracted absence from his side. “I know’d you’d do it. Girls is never to be trusted, girls isn’t. ’Tis in their constitution to betray.”