s, too, but in what degree they must tell me, for I
don't know--"

The road entering the forest, I ceased my prattle by instinct, and again
for the thousandth time I sniffed at odors new to me, and scanned leafy
depths for those familiar trees which stand warden in our Southern
forests. There were pines, but they were not our pines, these feathery,
dark-stemmed trees; there were oaks, but neither our golden water oaks
nor our great, green-and-silver live-oaks. Little, pale flowers bloomed
everywhere, shadows only of our bright blossoms of the South; and the
rare birds I saw were gray and small, and chary of song, as though the
stillness that slept in this Northern forest was a danger not to be
awakened. Loneliness fell on me; my shoulders bent and my head hung
heavily. Isene, my mare, paced the soft forest-road without a sound, so
quietly that the squatting rabbit leaped from between her forelegs, and
the slim, striped, squirrel-like creatures crouched paralyzed as we
passed ere they burst into their shrill chatter of fright or anger, I
know not which.

Had I a night to spend in this wilderness I should not know where to
find a palmetto-fan for a torch, where to seek light-wood for splinter.
It was all new to me; signs read riddles; tracks were sealed books; the
east winds brought rain, where at home they bring heaven's own balm to
us of the Spanish grants on the seaboard; the northwest winds that we
dread turn these Northern skies to sapphire, and set bees a-humming on
every bud.

There was no salt in the air, no citrus scent in the breeze, no heavy
incense of the great magnolia bloom perfuming the wilderness like a
cathedral aisle where a young bride passes, clouded in lace.

But in the heat a heavy, sweetish odor hung; balsam it is called, and
mingled, too, with a faint scent like our bay, which comes from a woody
bush called sweet-fern. That, and the strong smell of the bluish,
short-needled pine, was ever clogging my nostrils and confusing me. Once
I thought to scent a 'possum, but the musky taint came from a rotting
log; and a stale fox might have crossed to windward and I not noticed,
so blunted had grown my nose in this unfamiliar Northern world.

Musing, restless, dimly confused, and doubly watchful, I rode through
the timber-belt, and out at last into a dusty, sunny road. And
straightway I sighted a house.

The house was of stone, and large and square and gray, with only a
pillared porch instead of the