through the
sylvan calm of those dear places which seemed that day to be full of
a great friendliness; Uncle Blair sauntered along behind us, whistling
softly; sometimes he talked to himself; we delighted in those brief
reveries of his; Uncle Blair was the only man I have ever known who
could, when he so willed, "talk like a book," and do it without seeming
ridiculous; perhaps it was because he had the knack of choosing "fit
audience, though few," and the proper time to appeal to that audience.

We went across the fields, intending to skirt the woods at the back of
Uncle Alec's farm and find a lane that cut through Uncle Roger's woods;
but before we came to it we stumbled on a sly, winding little path quite
by accident--if, indeed, there can be such a thing as accident in the
woods, where I am tempted to think we are led by the Good People along
such of their fairy ways as they have a mind for us to walk in.

"Go to, let us explore this," said Uncle Blair. "It always drags
terribly at my heart to go past a wood lane if I can make any excuse at
all for traversing it: for it is the by-ways that lead to the heart of
the woods and we must follow them if we would know the forest and be
known of it. When we can really feel its wild heart beating against ours
its subtle life will steal into our veins and make us its own for ever,
so that no matter where we go or how wide we wander in the noisy ways of
cities or over the lone ways of the sea, we shall yet be drawn back to
the forest to find our most enduring kinship."

"I always feel so SATISFIED in the woods," said the Story Girl dreamily,
as we turned in under the low-swinging fir boughs. "Trees seem such
friendly things."

"They are the most friendly things in God's good creation," said Uncle
Blair emphatically. "And it is so easy to live with them. To hold
converse with pines, to whisper secrets with the poplars, to listen to
the tales of old romance that beeches have to tell, to walk in eloquent
silence with self-contained firs, is to learn what real companionship
is. Besides, trees are the same all over the world. A beech tree on the
slopes of the Pyrenees is just what a beech tree here in these Carlisle
woods is; and there used to be an old pine hereabouts whose twin brother
I was well acquainted with in a dell among the Apennines. Listen to
those squirrels, will you, chattering over yonder. Did you ever hear
such a fuss over nothing? Squirrels are the gossips and bus