ut the doubtful benefit of speech.

* * * * *

"When snow was over earth and lake and sky,
How often where pale hemlock boughs bent low
Have we beheld his flying shape go by,
An arrow sped from an immortal bow!"

TO JOY-OF-LIFE

So that was why our collie went away,
Wise Sigurd, knowing you would come
Ere a new springtide by the valley gray,
Planning to guide you home,

To bark Heaven's earliest welcome, to entice
Those dearest feet the dim glen through,
Then proudly up blithe hills of Paradise
To "find the path" for you.

II

OTHER COMRADES OF THE ROAD

THE PINE GROVE PATH

Our festal day was yet so young,
As through the pines I came to you,
The level sunrise lightly flung
Before my feet, O eager feet,
A flickering path of flame to you.

The purple finches, breakfasting
On pinecone seeds, in charity
Tossed down the silky scales, to bring
My human heart, O singing heart,
A share of their hilarity.

But gladder than those revelers
So raspberry red, I sped to you,
Beyond the pines, beyond the firs,
A birthday guest, O blissful guest
To tread the path that led to you.

ROBIN HOOD

"The little bird with the red breast, which for his great
familiarity with men they call a Robin, if he meet any one on the
woods to go astray, and to wander he knows not whither out of his
way, of common charitie will take upon him to guide him, at least
out of the woods, if he will but follow him, as some think. This I
am sure of, it is a comfortable and sweet companion."

--_Partheneia Sacra_. By "H. A." 1533.

The early history of Robin Hood, like that of too many illustrious
characters, is veiled in obscurity. I never knew his parents nor was I
ever on speaking terms with any other member of his family. I cannot
tell whether his nursery was set in an apple tree or elm or oak or
pine, nor whether it was wind or boy or other untoward circumstance of
nestling life that cast his helpless infancy adrift upon the world. Our
earliest knowledge of Robin Hood dates from Sunday morning, June 16,
1901, when a group of Wellesley children, demurely wending their way to
Sunday School across a bit of open green, heard chirps in the grass and
picked up a baby robin, cold, hungry, bedraggled, pecked and generally
forlorn. Th