THE HAUNT OF THE ANCHORITE 289 



at times; but for a moment, to be lifted out of it, 

 I span a long straight pine and climb by its boughs 

 to the top. Looking out from this aerial altitude, 

 the world seems a flood of delicate greenery. No 

 tree so beautiful as the pine. A thousand tender 

 tops seek the light the only moving objects in the 

 landscape. Trailing green-tasselled fingers, how 

 exquisitely beautiful ye are! How delicate your 

 tracery! And then the balm and gum of resinous 

 woods! In summer the long pine-boughs sit like 

 brooding doves over the warm earth. In winter 

 they hang out funereal plumes when the ground is 

 locked in ice. No dead crackling boughs are here 

 nothing but life; the warm yielding up, the 

 hum and essence of being. Among the fir-tree tops 

 all is sunlight. Squirrels chatter, wood-pigeons coo. 

 Even the flies have come up here and lazily revolve 

 in their mazy flight. 



Peeping out of the wood, far out yonder, is a ruin 

 a ruin with all its monastic associations and hoar. 

 When the red deer and the wolf roamed along the 

 fell-side it formed a hospice. Later it was the 

 meagre shelter of an anchorite a recluse. In it 

 he lived, harmless and unoffending. He knew well 

 the times and seasons, gathered flowers and boughs 

 and berries about his lone home, and talked with the 

 animals and birds. The latter he fed daily; the 

 former learned to confide in him. He dug ground- 



