94 A TRAMP IN THE CATSKILLS 



features. Some magic scene-shifting seemed to take 

 place before my eyes, till, instead of the unknown set- 

 tlement which I at first seemed to look upon, there 

 stood the farmhouse at which we had stopped two 

 days before, and at the same moment we heard the 

 stamping of our team in the barn. We sat down and 

 laughed heartily over our good luck. Our desperate 

 venture had resulted better than we had dared to hope, 

 and had shamed our wisest plaits. At the house our 

 arrival had been anticipated about this time, and din- 

 ner was being put upon the table. 



It was then five o'clock, so that we had been in the 

 woods just forty-eight hours; but if time is only phe- 

 nomenal, as the philosophers say, and life only in feel- 

 ing, as the poets aver, we were some months, if not 

 years, older at that moment than we had been two 

 days before. Yet younger, too, though this be a 

 paradox, for the birches had infused into us some 

 of their own suppleness and strength. 



