UNVER 1M APPLET AoDnYo 
doubtless dated back to the time when our rude 
forebears were cave-dwellers in very earnest. The 
little niches and miniature recesses in the rocks at 
the side were so pretty and suggestive, and would 
have been so useful to a real troglodyte. Of a hot 
summer Sunday one found the coolness of the heart 
of the hills in these rocky cells, and in winter one 
found the air tempered by warmth from the same 
source. To get down on one’s hands and knees and 
creep through an opening in the rocks where bears 
and Indians have doubtless crept, or to kindle a fire 
where one fancies prehistoric fires have burned, or to 
eat black birch and wintergreens, or a lunch of wild 
strawberries and bread where Indians had probably 
often supped on roots or game — what more wel- 
come to a boy than that? 
As a man [I love still to loiter about these open 
doors of the hills, playing the geologist and the 
naturalist, or half-playing them, and half-dreaming 
in the spirit of my youthful days. Phoebe-birds’ 
nests may be found any day under these rocks, but 
on one of my recent visits to them I found an un- 
usual nest on the face of the rocks such I had never 
before seen. At the first glance, from its mossy 
exterior, I took it for a phcebe’s nest, but close in- 
spection showed it to be a mouse’s nest — the most 
delicate and artistic bit of mouse architecture I ever 
saw — a regular mouse palace; dome-shaped, cov- 
ered with long moss that grew where the water had 
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