A NEW ENGLAND WOODPILE 



most twigs which the hired man brings 

 home to the little folks, who fall to gnaw- 

 ing them like a colony of beavers. By 

 it is an elm, whose hollow trunk was the 

 home of raccoons when it stood on its 

 buttressed stump in the swamp. Near 

 by is a beech, its smooth bark wrinkled 

 where branches bent away from it, and 

 blotched with spots of white and patches 

 of black and gray lichen. It is marked 

 with innumerable fine scratches, the track 

 of the generations of squirrels that have 

 made it their highway ; and among these, 

 the wider apart and parallel nail-marks 

 of a raccoon, and also the drilling of 

 woodpeckers. Here, too, are traces of 

 man's visitation, for distorted with the 

 growth of years are initials, and a heart 

 and dart that symbolized the tender pas- 

 sion of some one of the past, who wan- 

 dered, love-sick, in the shadow of the 

 woods. How long ago did death's inevi- 

 table dart pierce his heart ? Here he 

 wrote a little of his life's history, and 

 now his name and that of his mistress are 

 so completely forgotten one cannot guess 

 them by their first letters inscribed in 

 the yesterday of the forest's years. 

 244 



