l do
for money."

Joe thought so too,--had been thinking so ever since he broke the seal
of the letter that the postmaster at Woodstock had directed for his
father. "Dad's right; trees have feelings," he kept repeating to
himself. And, as to being human, he could recall a dozen that he had
talked to and that had talked back to him ever since he could remember.
His father had taught him their language on the long days when he had
trailed behind carrying the gum bag or had hidden in the bushes while
the old man wormed himself along, his rifle in the hollow of his arm,
or when the two lay stretched out before their camp fire.

"Dogs and trees, my son, will never go back on ye like some folks I've
hearn tell of. Allers find 'em the same. See that yaller birch over
thar?--Well, I've knowed that birch over forty-two year and he ain't
altered a mite, 'cept his clothes ain't as decent as they was, and his
shoes is give out 'round the roots. You kin see whar the bark's busted
'long 'round his toes,--but his heart's all right and he's alive and
peart, too. You'll find him fust tree out in the spring,--sometimes
'fore the sugar sap's done runnin'. Purty soon, if you watch him same's
me, ye'll see him begin to shake all over,--kind o' shivery with some
inside fun; then comes the buds and, fust thing ye know, he gives a
little see-saw or two in the warm air and out busts the leaves, and he
a laughin' fit to kill. Maybe the birds ain't glad, and maybe them
squirrels that's been snowed up all winter with their noses out o' that
crotch, ain't jes' holdin' their sides, and maybe, too, them little
sunbeams don't like to sneak in and go to sleep on the bark all silvery
and shinin' like the ribbons on Sis's hat! They're human, them trees
is, I tell ye, son,--real human!

"And ye want to treat 'em with some perliteness, too they're older'n
anything 'round here 'cept the rocks; and they've been holdin' up the
dignity of this valley, too,--kind o' 'sponsible for things. That's
another thing ye mustn't forgit. The fust folks that come travellin'
through this notch--'bout time the Injins quit,--took notice on 'em, I
tell ye. That's what they come for. Bald Top and White Face was all
right, but it was the trees that knocked 'em silly. That's what you kin
read in the book school-teacher has, and that's true. And see how they
treat their brothers that git toppled over,--by a windslash, maybe, or
lightnin' or a landslide, or some such cussed thi