“Why do you call it the Wolf Pit?” asked Molly, walking very close to Betsy and holding very tightly to her hand.
“Oh, long, ever so long ago, when the first settlers came up here, they heard a wolf howling all night, and when it didn’t stop in the morning, they came up here on the mountain and found a wolf had fallen in and couldn’t get out.”
“My! I hope they killed him!” said Molly.
“Oh, gracious! that was more than a hundred years ago,” said Betsy. She was not thinking of what she was saying. She was thinking that if they were on the right road they ought to be home by this time. She was thinking that the right road ran down hill to the house all the way, and that this certainly seemed to be going up a little. She was wondering what had become of Shep. “Stand here just a minute, Molly,” she said. “I want … I just want to go ahead a little bit and see … and see …” She darted on around a curve of the road and stood still, her heart sinking. The road turned there and led straight up the mountain!
For just a moment the little girl felt a wild impulse to burst out in a shriek for Aunt Frances, and to run crazily away, anywhere so long as she was running. But the thought of Molly standing back there, trustfully waiting to be taken care of, shut Betsy’s lips together hard before her scream of fright got out. She stood still, thinking. Now she mustn’t get frightened. All they had to do was to walk back along the road till they came to the fork and then make the right turn. But what if they didn’t get back to the turn till it was so dark they couldn’t see it … ? Well, she mustn’t think of that. She ran back, calling, “Come on, Molly,” in a tone she tried to make as firm as Cousin Ann’s. “I guess we have made the wrong turn after all. We’d better …”
But there was no Molly there. In the brief moment Betsy had stood thinking, Molly had disappeared. The long, shadowy wood road held not a trace of her.
Then Betsy was frightened and then she did begin to scream, at the top of her voice, “Molly! Molly!” She was beside herself with terror, and started back hastily to hear Molly’s voice, very faint, apparently coming from the ground under her feet.
“Ow! Ow! Betsy! Get me out! Get me out!”
“Where are you?” shrieked Betsy.
“I don’t know!” came Molly’s sobbing voice. “I just moved the least little bit out of the road, and slipped on the ice and began to slide and I couldn’t stop myself and I fell down into a deep hole!”
Betsy’s head felt as though her hair were standing up straight on end with horror. Molly must have fallen down into the Wolf Pit! Yes, they were quite near it. She remembered now that big white-birch tree stood right at the place where the brook tumbled over the edge and fell into it. Although she was dreadfully afraid of falling in herself, she went cautiously over to this tree, feeling her way with her foot to make sure she did not slip, and peered down into the cavernous gloom below. Yes, there was Molly’s little face, just a white speck. The child was crying, sobbing, and holding up her arms to Betsy.
“Are you hurt, Molly?”
“No. I fell into a big snowbank, but I’m all wet and frozen and I want to get out! I want to get out!”
Betsy held on to the birch-tree. Her head whirled. What should she do! “Look here, Molly,” she called down, “I’m going to run back along to the right road and back to the house and get Uncle Henry. He’ll come with a rope and get you out!”
At this Molly’s crying rose to a frantic scream. “Oh, Betsy, don’t leave me here alone! Don’t! Don’t! The wolves will get me! Betsy, don’t leave me alone!” The child was wild with terror.
“But I can’t get you out myself!” screamed back Betsy, crying herself. Her teeth were chattering with the cold.
“Don’t go! Don’t go!” came up from the darkness of the pit in a piteous howl. Betsy made a great effort and stopped crying. She sat down on a stone and tried to think. And this is what came into her mind as a guide: “What would Cousin Ann do if she were here? She wouldn’t cry. She would think of something.”
Betsy looked around her desperately. The first thing she saw was the big limb of a pine-tree, broken off by the wind, which half lay and half slantingly stood up against a tree a little distance above the mouth of the pit. It had been there so long that the needles had all dried and fallen off, and the skeleton of the branch with the broken stubs looked like … yes, it looked like a ladder! That was what Cousin Ann would have done!
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute, Molly!” she called wildly down the pit, warm all over in excitement. “Now listen. You go off there in a corner, where the ground makes
