How Animals Talk 



impossible! I had never before entered this part 

 of the vast forest. Yet I must have seen it some- 

 where,, or it could not now stir a familiar memory. 

 Nonsense! just a trick of the imagination. I must 

 hurry on. Thus my thoughts ran, like a circling 

 hare; and all the while the ash-tree seemed to be 

 smiling at my perplexity. 



The man who ignores such a hint has much to 

 learn about woodcraft, which is largely a sub- 

 conscious art; so I sat down to smoke a council- 

 pipe with myself and the ash-tree over the matter. 

 No sooner was the mind left to its own unhampered 

 way than it began to piece bits of a puzzle-picture 

 deftly together; and when the picture was com- 

 plete I knew exactly where I was, and where I 

 might quickly find a familiar trail. Eight years 

 before, in an idle hour when nothing stirred on 

 my pond, I had explored a mile or so beyond the 

 bog to the south, only to find a swampy, desolate 

 country without a trail or conspicuous landmark 

 of any kind. It was while I passed through this 

 waste, seeking nothing in particular and returning 

 to my pond, that the mind took its snapshot of a 

 certain tree, and preserved the picture so carefully, 

 so minutely, that years later the original was in- 

 stantly recognized. Many similar ash-trees grew 

 on that flat, each with its glossy crown and its 

 gray shaft flecked by dark-green moss; what 



[252] 



