d and burn every
piece and vestige of the venerable old tree. I told them I should
be gone by dark. Then I went back and piled into a pyramid every
fragment of root and trunk and broken branch. Seating myself upon this
pyramid, I spent some time that afternoon gazing through the autumn
sunglow at the hazy Mesa Verde, while my mind rebuilt and shifted the
scenes of the long, long drama in which Old Pine had played his part,
and of which he had given us but a few fragmentary records. I lingered
there dreaming until twilight. I thought of the cycles during which he
had stood patient in his appointed place, and my imagination busied
itself with the countless experiences that had been recorded, and the
scenes and pageants he had witnessed but of which he had made no
record. I wondered if he had enjoyed the changing of seasons. I knew
that he had often boomed or hymned in the storm or in the breeze. Many
a monumental robe of snow-flowers had he worn. More than a thousand
times he had beheld the earth burst into bloom amid the happy songs of
mating birds; hundreds of times in summer he had worn countless
crystal rain-jewels in the sunlight of the breaking storm, while the
brilliant rainbow came and vanished on the near-by mountain-side. Ten
thousand times he had stood silent in the lonely light of the white
and mystic moon.

Twilight was fading into darkness when I arose and started on a
night-journey for the Mesa Verde, where I intended next morning to
greet an old gnarled cedar which grew on its summit. When I arrived at
the top of the Mesa, I looked back and saw a pyramid of golden flame
standing out in the darkness.

The Beaver and his Works

I have never been able to decide which I love best, birds or trees,
but as these are really comrades it does not matter, for they can take
first place together. But when it comes to second place in my
affection for wild things, this, I am sure, is filled by the beaver.
The beaver has so many interesting ways, and is altogether so useful,
so thrifty, so busy, so skillful, and so picturesque, that I believe
his life and his deeds deserve a larger place in literature and a
better place in our hearts. His engineering works are of great value
to man. They not only help to distribute the waters and beneficially
control the flow of the streams, but they also catch and save from
loss enormous quantities of the earth's best plant-food. In helping to
do these two things,--governing