The weather grew cold and crisp. There was a smell of smoke in the air from burning leaves and from the chimneys of the faculty homes wherein wood fires glowed cheerfully.
At last Saturday arrived. It was the day of the excursion to Exmoor, and it was with more or less anxiety regarding the weather that the three girls scanned the skies that morning for signs of rain. But the heavens were a deep and cloudless blue and the air mildly caressing, neither too cold nor too warm.
"It is like the Indian summers we have at home," exclaimed Molly, when, an hour later, they turned their faces toward the village through which the trolley passed.
Mabel Hinton, passing them as they started, had called out:
"To Exmoor! To Exmoor, for now the day has come at last!" paraphrasing a song Judy was in the habit of singing.
Indeed the day seemed so perfect and joyous that they could hardly keep from singing aloud instead of just humming when they boarded the trolley car.
Through the country they sped swiftly. The valley unfolded itself before them in all its beauty and the misty blue hills in the distance seemed to draw nearer. Over everything there was a sense of autumn peace which comes when the world is drowsing off into his deep sleep.
"Exmoor!" called the conductor at last, and the three girls stepped off at a charming rustic station. With a clang of the bell which rang out harshly in the still air, the car flew on.
The three girls looked at the empty station. Then they looked at each other with a kind of mock consternation, for nothing really mattered.
"Where is Dodo?" asked Judy, with the smile of the victor, since she had predicted only a few moments before that Dodo might by this time have become so frightened at his boldness that he would suddenly become extinct like his namesake, the dodo-bird.
"Well, if Dodo is really extinct," said Molly, "we'll just take a little walk back through the fields. Epiménides thought nothing of it. He expects to walk to-day and meet us at lunch."
But Dodo was not extinct that morning, and they beheld him now running down the steep road as fast as his heavy boots could carry him.
"Behold, his spirit has risen from its fossil remains and he now walks among us in the guise of a man," chanted Judy.