ly through the forest.

Pearl had not found the hour pass wearisomely, while her mother sat
talking with the clergyman. The great black forest--stern as it showed
itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of the world into
its bosom--became the playmate of the lonely infant, as well as it
knew how. Sombre as it was, it put on the kindest of its moods to
welcome her. It offered her the partridge-berries, the growth of the
preceding autumn, but ripening only in the spring, and now red as
drops of blood upon the withered leaves. These Pearl gathered, and was
pleased with their wild flavor. The small denizens of the wilderness
hardly took pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with a
brood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soon repented
of her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to be afraid. A
pigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed Pearl to come beneath, and
uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm. A squirrel, from the
lofty depths of his domestic tree, chattered either in anger or
merriment,--for a squirrel is such a choleric and humorous little
personage, that it is hard to distinguish between his moods,--so he
chattered at the child, and flung down a nut upon her head. It was a
last year's nut, and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox,
startled from his sleep by her light footstep on the leaves, looked
inquisitively at Pearl, as doubting whether it were better to steal
off, or renew his nap on the same spot. A wolf, it is said,--but here
the tale has surely lapsed into the improbable,--came up, and smelt of
Pearl's robe, and offered his savage head to be patted by her hand.
The truth seems to be, however, that the mother-forest, and these wild
things which it nourished, all recognized a kindred wildness in the
human child.

And she was gentler here than in the grassy-margined streets of the
settlement, or in her mother's cottage. The flowers appeared to know
it; and one and another whispered as she passed, "Adorn thyself with
me, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with me!"--and, to please
them, Pearl gathered the violets, and anemones, and columbines, and
some twigs of the freshest green, which the old trees held down before
her eyes. With these she decorated her hair, and her young waist, and
became a nymph-child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in
closest sympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had Pearl
adorned herself, when she heard her mot