e station, caught glimpses through the forest for a mile
or two of its walls and heavy chimneys stained with smoke and lichen.
They seemed to grow out of the ground as naturally as the oaks and gray
beeches.

It was a damp, cool day in June. Ragged patches of clouds were driven
down across the tree-tops; the dark blue of the sky had yet a tinge of
moist yellow in it after the night's rains; the wind was wet as it blew
now and then gustily in Neckart's face. He jumped across a brush hedge
overgrown with smilax and blackberry vines, and passed in under the
hemlocks. They were dark and still. Outside, the sunshine flashed
sometimes, pale and watery, and the blackberries in the hedge were
getting rid of their white blossoms and reddening their green knobs, and
a wild tiger-lily here and there blazed its answer to the summer; but
the old hemlocks, just as Neckart knew them when a boy, kept silence and
nodded thoughtfully together, meditating over their ancient secret. He
walked more slowly. How long was it since he had left the office or sat
in the club-room at breakfast with Rhodes's puffy face and unsavory
talk?

Why, even the hedge with its sleepy hum of bees and yellow butterflies
seemed to be of the world, worldly here. He left it far behind. The
aisles of the wood grew higher and more solemn, and slowly filled with
pale-green light. The wind and rain last night had not reached these
solitudes, yet he climbed over fallen trunks rank with soaked emerald
moss and branching fungus yellow or red as coral. A lizard with bulging
eyes of jet darted across his foot: now came the whir of a partridge
from under the dead leaves, now the veery cut the air with its fine
silver pipe.

Neckart stood still and drew long slow breaths. The life of the woods
was like sleep to him; the air was marrowy, stimulating; he could feel
himself growing quiet and stronger in it. A moment later he drew his
breath deeper.

"She is coming!" A tall, erect girl, bareheaded, came noiselessly down
between the gray trunks of the trees, her feet sinking at each step into
the dead, ash-colored moss. Her color rose as she saw him, and her eyes
lighted, but she put her finger on her lips. "You have frightened them,"
she whispered. "They have all gone into their houses."

"They--?"

"Hush-h!" She sat down on a fallen log and motioned him to a place
beside her: then she waited, listening. There was a space of silence:
presently a red squirrel came out ov