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Side by side with this lawn-like lane is another which was once traversed by the cattle of the next farm, but which has not been used for a lifetime. In this the wild things of the wood are untrammeled, save by one another, and they hold it in riotous possession. Just as the first lane is tame and sleek this other is wild and unkempt. The raspberry and blackberry tangle catches you by the leg if you enter, as if to hold you until birch and alder, cedar and sassafras, look you over and decide whether or not you are of their lodge. If you give them the right grip you may pass. If not, you will be well switched and scratched before you are allowed to go on.

Here the wild grape climbs unpruned from wall to cedar, from cedar to birch and from birch to oak, whence it sends its witching fragrance far on the morning air. You may stalk a wild grape in bloom a mile by the scent and be well rewarded by finding the very place where the air tingles with it.

This lane is wild, and the wild things of the woods that come on fleet wing and nimble foot frequent it. You may never see a partridge in the sleek lane, and if by chance the red fox crosses it he does so gingerly and as if it were hot under foot. In the other, however, the fox may slink for an hour unscared, waiting with watchful eye on the neighboring chicken coop, the red squirrel builds his nest in the cedar, and the partridge leads her young brood among the blackberry bushes of an early morning.