beneath my eyes may open and let out the troop. Their
comings and goings need be only a little more mysterious than
those of the chipmunks in the old wall or the Cingalia catenaria
that is again flitting forth in the chill of gray dusk to seek
what honey the coleuses and the coppers, the vanessas and the wasp
have left behind.

*****

The pale yellow glow of autumn twilight settles in deep peace upon
the place. You seem to be at once in a vast silence and yet able
to note all that goes on in the world for many miles about by
unobtrusive sounds. To stand here in the open with the night
descending in blessing upon you is to be in touch with the
universe: In town night shuts you away from the rest of the world,
wraps you in your own tiny seclusion. Out here it makes you one
with the deep secrets of common life. The mystical quality for the
time vanishes and the radiance which long holds the sky seems but
the light of home, a light which is no longer within a room or
shut off by the walls of a house, but the real home of all the
world's creatures to which you have come at last.

As the glow fades and the darkness deepens it seems good to lie
down beneath the silent pines that stretch their great arms over
you in protecting fatherliness and become an integral part of the
peace of the place. Sleep that comes thus is deep and refreshing.
Yet always with it there goes a subtle sub-consciousness which
makes you alert to what goes on about you. Thus with the piping up
of the night wind you hear once more the rapt voices of the great
pines, the chanting of those weird sages of the unknown. All the
mystical comes back to the pasture with the sound and the deep
song of the elder trees comes nearer to finding words for you
than, it can at any other time. I fancy that all the wee lives
that sleep and wake beneath it are part of its mystery, its
longing and its unfathomable promise.

CHAPTER XIX

WHITE PINE GROVES

A tiny brown wing brushed my cheek this morning, flitting madly
southeastward on the wings of the November gale. It was a belated
one of many that have scattered from the pine taps this autumn,
for it was the single wing of a white pine seed and the cone
harvest has been good. Ever since August the squirrels have known
this and the stripped spindles lie by the score under the big
pasture pines where these have left them after eating the seeds.
It seems much work for small pay for the squirrel. He must clim