Give two adjectives to describe the forest at the beginning of the story. Explain each choice

Dangerous

Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous forest, stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots, which afforded
precarious footholds among deep sloughs, or pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees, startled now and then by
the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some solitary pool.

Spooky.... Mysterious

Any one but he would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place, for the common people had a bad opinion of it, from the stories handed down from the times of the Indian wars, when it was asserted that the savages held incantations here and made sacrifices to the Evil Spirit.