The Heiress of Mcgregor by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

JUST at the corner of the McGregor farm a narrow green road branched off from the main track and led upward among the hills. It was so little used that the short grass nearly covered it, and the melting snows and rains had so gullied and washed the track that any wheeled carriage less strong than a lumber-wagon would have been in great danger of being wrecked. At first the road was bordered by stone walls showing their age by the mosses and lichens which spotted them. Higher up the boundary vanished altogether on one side, and on the other turned into an ancient fence of pine and hemlock stumps, such as one often sees in New England, the worn and bleached but imperishable roots rising above the blackberry and clematis vines which covered the lower part like the bones of antediluvean monsters.

On that side was a stony pasture the sight of which would have made Western-bred cows give up life in despair, but from which, nevertheless, came many a sturdy cheese and roll of fragrant butter. On the other side was first a tripping, chattering brook, then a narrow strip of wood largely made up of black spruce, and behind this a high rocky wall, steep as the side of a house most of the way, though here and there a gap and a narrow, hard-beaten path showed that the sheep had found a way to climb the barrier.