re in
daylight I am sure nothing stood, nor does it help to lay the hand
on them and know they are stumps. It is damp and draughty as it
was in the cavern where the prince first found the east wind, and
I look about half expecting to see the strong old woman who tended
the fire and put the winds in bags when they did not behave. There
she stands in the dusk nearby and only by putting my hand on the
prickly needles and the rough trunk do I recognize a familiar
pitch pine. The trees near this entrance to the enchanted wood
sigh as the east wind touches them, seeming to draw deep breaths
as living creatures might and thus add verisimilitude to the
terror that stands on either hand to reach for me. Thus ancient
hermits depicted the soul on the walls of their caverns, a
shrinking shape that fled among goblins that clutched at it from
all sides. The primal instinct of fear of things half seen still
lurks in each man's bones. On a pitch dark night I had made the
entrance to the wood without thought of ghosts. It is the half
known that frightens us.

Once within the wood in the deepening dusk I seemed to leave the
bogies behind. Not far through the pines the path brought me to a
halt cleared hollow where three-year sprouts mingle their lush
aspirations with scattered growth seeded half a century ago. A
lone deer seems to make this spot a sanctuary. Often in daylight
we meet here almost face to face and look at one another
curiously, neither much afraid. In the deepening darkness, just
freed from the primal terrors of the wood edge, I seemed to know
why the deer finds the place a refuge. Here in the little
sheltered hollow no goblins gibbered, no banshee wailed in the wet
wood. Instead the sprout clumps seemed to rustle cheery assurance
and the taller trees to bend in cozy friendliness over them. The
soft fingers of the rain had a soothing touch and wind and
darkness were kindly. I do not know why some spots in the woods
seem thus to shelter and protect whether by night or day while
others repel or fill with distrust, but I know it is so. On a
woodcock haunted slope or in a thicket beloved of ruffed grouse I
almost always feel as if my camp had been pitched in some previous
existence and I had just got home again, though the place,
perhaps, ought to be new to me. I fancy the deer feels that way
and I hope he was snuggled down in the shelter of some of those
big-leaved sprouts, warm and dry, as I passed by.

Down the glade a