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take with him. She picked it up. Then she realized that the map must have been the paper on which Gideon had written his letter. She took from her pocket the scrap with the hastily scribbled note he had left in the hollow tree. Sure enough, on the back of it were the lines showing the Connecticut River, where the White River emptied into it, and the easternmost part of the military road. She stared at it, heartsick.
    She searched frantically through the desk, under it, around the room, but the other half of the map was nowhere to be found. “Now what will I do?” she asked aloud, as though she hoped someone would appear by a miracle to answer. The miracle occurred. Gideon’s voice came into her head as clear and sure as it had been that day in the woods so long ago, when she’d asked him where Trout Brook began.
    “All you have to do to get across the mountains, Phoebe,” he said, “is follow our brook west, because that’s where it comes from. I mean to follow it one day, all the way to Lake Champlain.” Then he had laughed.
    “And now it is I who will go to Lake Champlain.” Phoebe spoke the words softly, like a promise to the memory of Gideon still so alive in this room where he had paced and paced only a day ago.
    She did not weep as she thought this. There did not seem to be any tears left. A calm had settled over her — not the cold calm she had felt when the certainty of Gideon’s death had come to her, but the calm that came of absolute determination. She knew what she was going to do and how she was going to do it. She wished she could leave without going back to the Robinsons’ house. She did not want to lie to Aunt Rachael, and she could not tell her what she meant to do, because Aunt Rachael wouldcertainly stop her from going. And she could not bear to face Anne, but she needed her mother’s warm cloak and something to eat. Taking one last look around the room, Phoebe went outside and latched the door carefully after her.

I Will Need to be
Very Brave
    D usk was deepening by the moment. The last of the rosy sunset hung over the deep green hills across the river, and the moon was not yet up, when Phoebe started down the Hanover hill. It had snowed a little, and a wind was coming up. Holding her shawl tightly around her, she hurried to keep warm and to keep from hearing the scuffling of wild animals in the wet leaves. She didn’t mind the pigeons cooing in the branches overhead or the plaintive sound of a late whip-poor-will somewhere in the trees, but the thought of wolves and wild cats made her shudder. Then, halfway down the hill, she heard a twig snap behind her. Someone was following her. She raced the rest of the way down the hill, jumped into the canoe, and pushed off from shore.
    Out on the river, well away from shore, she stopped paddling and forced herself to look back. There was no sign of anyone. There were only the branches of the alders and willows swaying silently in the wind. She rested back on her heels in the canoe and let the current carry her for a moment until she realized that she could soon be a mile down river unless she started to paddle. She looked into the deep, black water. She jumped and almost lost her paddle when she heard a beaver slap its tail somewhere along the river bank. How was she ever going to face the unknown wilderness for days and days — and nights — when she was this frightened of the part of it she knew so well?
    “I will need to be brave,” she whispered to the night. “I will need to be very brave.” But Phoebe had never felt brave, and she had never ventured beyond her own home, other than along the route between Hanover and Orland Village, and a small distance into the woods with Gideon on his plant quests.
    She dipped her paddle resolutely into the water. When she reached the shore, she pulled the canoe up by the willow trees and tried not to think about how long it might be before she did that again. She made her way silently along the brook