PORTRAITS IN INK 199 



and many pathed woodlands. He treads their 

 rustling carpet as silently as a panther, the sere 

 leaves do not stir, nor the dry twigs snap beneath 

 his feet and the bent boughs sway to their places 

 behind him without a sound. You are not aware of 

 his coming till he appears before you like an ap- 

 parition, nor of his going but as you watch him 

 like one dissolving in the shadows of the woods. 



His casual glances discover things which are not 

 revealed to directed gaze, and he translates rec- 

 ords that you cannot read. Where you see only a 

 knot or wisp of brown leaves, he discovers the bird 

 under the grouse's disguise of movelessness; on 

 what is to you only a blank page, he reads the 

 story of some remote or recent presence or pas- 

 sage. 



He knows every kind of tree and its varieties, 

 all the medicinal and poisonous plants by odd and 

 homely names that often have a tang of folk lore 

 or hint of forgotten use; and it is as instructive as 

 a professor's discourse on natural history to hear 

 him talk of the habits of wild things, for all his 

 quaint superstitions concern some of them. You 

 could find no arguments to shake his firm belief 

 that eels are generated in mussels or that skunks 

 have power to absorb their own spent effluence, nor 

 do you care to. 



He would not kill a nesting partridge or trap an 

 unprime fur-bearer, yet he holds all legislative 



