fe
(prospective or present), on the sudden appearance of friend or kith
have never been similarly affected. You didn't forget the questions
you had meant to ask till thousands of miles again separated you.

It was good to leave the Valley road and go into seclusion and shelter
on the Forest trail; for a hurricane September wind was blowing, the
kind of Western wind that the Eastern woman with a big hat thinks is
possessed by ten thousand devils; the kind of wind that the Eastern
office man with sensitive eyes curses with tears that are not grief;
the kind of wind that makes the Westerner put screw nails in _his_ hat
and look out for the fire guard round wheat, stock and timber.

Such a different home-going he had planned from this visitation of dumb
devils that obsessed them both! He used to dream at night in the
Desert of the day, perhaps, coming when they should set out together
adventuring a life joy in the Forests; _his_ Forests; when he would
show her the golden cottonwoods and the pale birches nursing the
pineries to strong maturity; and the fire blisters on the firs; and the
sugar blisters on the sugar pines; and the rain of green-gray tempered
light from the under side of the funereal hemlocks; and the park like
glades of the wonderfully straight and serried soldier ranks of the
engleman spruce and the lodge-pole pines; and the larches yellow as
gold dust to the touch of the alchemist autumn. He wanted to bring out
his violin some day with her and see if they could catch the exact tone
and pitch of the pines, when they began harping those age-old melodies
of Pan: they were harping them to-day in the high wind; he was sure it
was the same as the bass undertone of a big orchestra. Had she ever
noticed the way the seeds came fluffing out of the cinnamon cones and
the asters and the golden rod and the fire flower in September, for all
the world like fairies sailing pixie parachutes? People said that
autumn was sad, it presaged death! Did it? A Forester did not see it
so; he saw the triumphal procession of the years lighted to its
consummation by the flaming torches of ten thousand golden twinkling
gay, recklessly gay flowers and trees--the cottonwood and the poplar
and the larch, the cone flower and the golden rod and the aster! But
to-day, he could not say a word. They were no longer _his_ Forests.
He had been cast out from his life work--the continuity of a National
Life Work broken--because he had dared