ingered
in the vicinity of the farm, with perhaps a vague idea that some new
event would grow out of Westervelt's proposed interview with Zenobia.
My own part in these transactions was singularly subordinate. It
resembled that of the Chorus in a classic play, which seems to be set
aloof from the possibility of personal concernment, and bestows the
whole measure of its hope or fear, its exultation or sorrow, on the
fortunes of others, between whom and itself this sympathy is the only
bond. Destiny, it may be,--the most skilful of stage managers,--seldom
chooses to arrange its scenes, and carry forward its drama, without
securing the presence of at least one calm observer. It is his office
to give applause when due, and sometimes an inevitable tear, to detect
the final fitness of incident to character, and distil in his
long-brooding thought the whole morality of the performance.

Not to be out of the way in case there were need of me in my vocation,
and, at the same time, to avoid thrusting myself where neither destiny
nor mortals might desire my presence, I remained pretty near the verge
of the woodlands. My position was off the track of Zenobia's customary
walk, yet not so remote but that a recognized occasion might speedily
have brought me thither.

XII. COVERDALE'S HERMITAGE

Long since, in this part of our circumjacent wood, I had found out for
myself a little hermitage. It was a kind of leafy cave, high upward
into the air, among the midmost branches of a white-pine tree. A wild
grapevine, of unusual size and luxuriance, had twined and twisted
itself up into the tree, and, after wreathing the entanglement of its
tendrils around almost every bough, had caught hold of three or four
neighboring trees, and married the whole clump with a perfectly
inextricable knot of polygamy. Once, while sheltering myself from a
summer shower, the fancy had taken me to clamber up into this seemingly
impervious mass of foliage. The branches yielded me a passage, and
closed again beneath, as if only a squirrel or a bird had passed. Far
aloft, around the stem of the central pine, behold a perfect nest for
Robinson Crusoe or King Charles! A hollow chamber of rare seclusion
had been formed by the decay of some of the pine branches, which the
vine had lovingly strangled with its embrace, burying them from the
light of day in an aerial sepulchre of its own leaves. It cost me but
little ingenuity to enlarge the interior, and