80 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS 



over it as the most fastidious of village 

 householders is over his front-yard lawn. 

 Not a pebble, nor so much as an acorn, must 

 disfigure it. Fallen twigs were his special 

 abhorrence, though he treated them hand- 

 somely. Little piles or stacks of them were 

 scattered at short intervals along the way, 

 neatly corded up, every stick in line. I no- 

 ticed these mysterious accumulations before 

 I had ever seen the maker of them, and won- 

 dered not a little who could have been to so 

 much seemingly aimless trouble. At first 

 I imagined that some one must have laid 

 the wood together with a view to carrying it 

 home for the kitchen stove. But the bits 

 were too small, no bigger round, many of 

 them, than a man's little finger ; not even 

 Goody Blake could have thought such things 

 worth pilfering for firewood ; and besides, it 

 was plain that many of them had lain where 

 they were over at least one winter. 



The affair remained a riddle until I saw 

 the man himself. This I did but a few 

 times, a long way apart, and always at a 

 little distance. Generally his eyes were fas- 

 tened on the ground. Sometimes he had a 



