A DESULTORY PILGRIMAGE 37 



comfortable for the horse, while our noon 

 camps made us independent all day, and gave 

 us that sense of being at home outdoors that 

 one never gets if one has to run to cover for 

 every meal. 



And, curiously enough, the spots that seem 

 homelike to me, as I linger in memory among 

 the scenes of that week, are not the places 

 where we spent the nights, pleasant though 

 they were, but rather the spots where we 

 built our little fireplaces. Each was for an 

 hour our hearth-fire, our own, and I do 

 not forget them, some beside the open road, 

 one on a ridge where the sun slants across as it 

 goes down among purpling hills; one in the 

 deep woods, by a little trout brook, where the 

 sound of running water never ceases; one in 

 an open grove by the river we love best, where 

 a tiny brook with brown pools full of the shad 

 owy trout empties its cold waters into the 

 big, warm current. Perhaps no one else may 

 notice them, but they are there, waiting for 

 us, if haply we may pass that way again. And 

 if we do, we shall surely pause and give them 

 greeting. 



