TLbc IkneelauD /IDai&3. 



Crime, sorrow, disease, the wrong of man to man, and man 

 to woman have not spared our peaceful town in the century of its 

 life, and the dense growth of its great woods, for miles seldom trodden 

 by man, hide man}- a dark mystery, the shame of many a crime. 



As we drive through the West Village with its thronging homes, 

 we turn aside, near the curv^e in the railroad, to visit a gravel-knoll 

 half a mile from the road, secluded and covered with wood. On this 



The Kneeland Place. 



low hill, (debris of a moraine dating from the glacial epoch) a hunter, 

 a few years since, found in the shade of a tree a withered human body, 

 with a rope around the neck and a broken end hanging from a limb 

 overhead. He had lain there two or three years, unknown, un.seen, 

 perhaps never niis.sed. The mystery of the suicide remains to this da}' 

 unsolved, and, buried on the spot, the sleep of the faint-heart continues 

 unbroken under the tree he chose, in a lonely and .soon-to-be-forgotten 

 grave. 



We linger a moment near here, in the bed of the brook, to rejoice 

 in the wealth of flowers that greets us on every side, for the purple 

 monkey-face {Miuiulus ringeyis) hides under the bushes, with the 



