re, though, as having mice-like feet, they creep about, and come and
go; that, to you, these lifeless shadows are as living friends, who,
though out of sight, are not out of mind, even in their faces--is it
so?"

"That way I never thought of it. But the friendliest one, that used to
soothe my weariness so much, coolly quivering on the ferns, it was taken
from me, never to return, as Tray did just now. The shadow of a birch.
The tree was struck by lightning, and brother cut it up. You saw the
cross-pile out-doors--the buried root lies under it; but not the shadow.
That is flown, and never will come back, nor ever anywhere stir again."

Another cloud here stole along, once more blotting out the dog, and
blackening all the mountain; while the stillness was so still, deafness
might have forgot itself, or else believed that noiseless shadow spoke.

"Birds, Marianna, singing-birds, I hear none; I hear nothing. Boys and
bob-o-links, do they never come a-berrying up here?"

"Birds, I seldom hear; boys, never. The berries mostly ripe and
fall--few, but me, the wiser."

"But yellow-birds showed me the way--part way, at least."

"And then flew back. I guess they play about the mountain-side, but
don't make the top their home. And no doubt you think that, living so
lonesome here, knowing nothing, hearing nothing--little, at least, but
sound of thunder and the fall of trees--never reading, seldom speaking,
yet ever wakeful, this is what gives me my strange thoughts--for so you
call them--this weariness and wakefulness together Brother, who stands
and works in open air, would I could rest like him; but mine is mostly
but dull woman's work--sitting, sitting, restless sitting."

"But, do you not go walk at times? These woods are wide."

"And lonesome; lonesome, because so wide. Sometimes, 'tis true, of
afternoons, I go a little way; but soon come back again. Better feel
lone by hearth, than rock. The shadows hereabouts I know--those in the
woods are strangers."

"But the night?"

"Just like the day. Thinking, thinking--a wheel I cannot stop; pure want
of sleep it is that turns it."

"I have heard that, for this wakeful weariness, to say one's prayers,
and then lay one's head upon a fresh hop pillow--"

"Look!"

Through the fairy window, she pointed down the steep to a small garden
patch near by--mere pot of rifled loam, half rounded in by sheltering
rocks--where, side by side, some feet apart, nipped and puny, two
hop-v