t of beautiful living, though in no sense a living for any
other save the dual soul now withdrawn; and he could not be satisfied
with lesser loves, the makeshifts of a barren life. So, turning from
the world, he fled into the woods; for at that time Nature seemed to
him the only great, and he resolved that Francis, the son, should be
nourished by her alone.

One spring day, when the boy was eight years old, his father had said
to him:--

"We are going into the country to sleep in a tent, catch our own fish,
cook it ourselves, and ask favors of no man."

"Camping!" cried the boy, in ecstasy.

"No; living."

The necessities of a simple life were got together, and supplemented by
other greater necessities,--books, pictures, the boy's violin,--and
they betook themselves to a spot where the summer visitor was yet
unknown, the shore of a lake stretching a silver finger toward the
north. There they lived all summer, shut off from human intercourse
save with old Pierre, who brought their milk and eggs and constituted
their messenger-in-ordinary to the village, ten miles away. When autumn
came, Ernest Hume looked into his son's brown eyes and asked,--

"Now shall we go back?"

"No! no! no!" cried the boy, with a child's passionate cumulation of
accent.

"Not when the snow comes?"

"No, father."

"And the lake is frozen over?"

"No, father."

"Then," said Hume, with a sigh of great content, "we must have a
log-cabin, lest our bones lie bleaching on the shore."

Next morning he went into the woods with Pierre and two men hastily
summoned from the village, and there they began to make axe-music, the
requiem of the trees. The boy sat by, dreaming as he sometimes did for
hours before starting up to throw himself into the active delights of
swimming, leaping, or rowing a boat. Next day, also, they kept on
cutting into the heart of the forest. One dryad after another was
despoiled of her shelter; one after another, the green tents of the
bird and the wind were folded to make that sacred tabernacle--a home.
Sometimes Francis chopped a little with his hatchet, not to be left out
of the play, and then sat by again, smoothing the bruised fern-forests,
or whistling back the squirrels who freely chattered out their opinions
on invasion. Then came other days just as mild winds were fanning the
forest into gold, when the logs went groaning through the woods, after
slow-stepping horses, to be piled into symmetry, tightened wit