And whenever I happened around, her face it was hid by a book,
And it warn't till the day she left that she give me ez much ez a
look.

And this was the way it was. It was night when I kem up here
To say to 'em all "good-by," for I reckoned to go for deer
At "sun up" the day they left. So I shook 'em all round by the hand,
'Cept Mabel, and she was sick, ez they give me to understand.

But jist ez I passed the house next morning at dawn, some one,
Like a little waver o' mist got up on the hill with the sun;
Miss Mabel it was, alone--all wrapped in a mantle o' lace--
And she stood there straight in the road, with a touch o' the sun in
her face.

And she looked me right in the eye--I'd seen suthin' like it before
When I hunted a wounded doe to the edge o' the Clear Lake Shore,
And I had my knee on its neck, and I jist was raisin' my knife,
When it give me a look like that, and--well, it got off with its life.

"We are going to-day," she said, "and I thought I would say good-by
To you in your own house, Luke--these woods and the bright blue sky!
You've always been kind to us, Luke, and papa has found you still
As good as the air he breathes, and wholesome as Laurel Tree Hill.

"And we'll always think of you, Luke, as the thing we could not take
away,--
The balsam that dwells in the woods, the rainbow that lives in the
spray.
And you'll sometimes think of ME, Luke, as you know you once used to
say,
A rifle smoke blown through the woods, a moment, but never to stay."

And then we shook hands. She turned, but a-suddent she tottered and
fell,
And I caught her sharp by the waist, and held her a minit. Well,
It was only a minit, you know, thet ez cold and ez white she lay
Ez a snowflake here on my breast, and then--well, she melted away--

And was gone.... And thar are her books; but I says not any for me;
Good enough may be for some, but them and I mightn't agree.
They spiled a decent gal ez might hev made some chap a wife,
And look at me!--clar two hundred--and never read one in my life!

"THE BABES IN THE WOODS"

(BIG PINE FLAT, 1871)

"Something characteristic," eh?
Humph! I reckon you mean by that
Something that happened in our way,
Here at the crossin' of Big Pine Flat.