on 



broken branch. Seating myself upon this pyra 

 mid, 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 lin- 

 gered there dreaming until twilight. I thought 

 of the cycles during which he had stood pa- 

 tient in his appointed place, and my imagina- 

 tion 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 



4 8 



