-bound copy
of Burns that he drew from his coat pocket he did not give me, however,
but fondly holding it in his hands said:--

"It was my mother's. She always read to us out of it. She knew every
line of it by heart as I do.

"'Some books are lies frae end to end'--

but this is no one of them. I have carried it these many years."

Our walk brought us back to the house and into the cool living-room
where a few sticks were burning on the hearth. Taking one of the
rocking-chairs before the fireplace, the Pilgrim sat for a time looking
into the blaze. Then he began to rock gently back and forth, his eyes
fixed upon the fire, quite forgetful evidently of my presence, and
while he rocked his lips moved as, half audibly, he began to speak with
some one--not with me--with some one invisible to me who had come to
him out of the flame. I listened as he spoke, but it was a language
that I could not understand.

Then remembering where he was he turned to me and said, his eyes going
back again beyond the fire,--

"She often comes to me like this; but I am very lonely since she left
me,--lonely--lonely--and so I came on to Concord to visit Thoreau's
grave."

And this too was language I could not understand. I watched him in
silence, wondering what was behind his visit to me.

"Thoreau was a lonely man," he went on, "as most writers are, I think,
but Thoreau was very lonely."

"Wild," Burroughs had called him; "irritating," I had called him; and
on the table beside the Pilgrim lay even then a letter from Mr.
Burroughs, in which he had taken me to task on behalf of Thoreau.

"I feel like scolding you a little," ran the letter, "for disparaging
Thoreau for my benefit. Thoreau is nearer the stars than I am. I may
be more human, but he is certainly more divine. His moral and ethical
value I think is much greater, and he has a heroic quality that I
cannot approach."

There was something queer in this. Why had I not understood Thoreau?
Wild he surely was, and irritating too, because of a certain strain and
self-consciousness. A "counter-irritant" he called himself. Was this
not true?

As if in answer to my question, as if to explain his coming out to
Mullein Hill, the Pilgrim drew forth a folded sheet of paper from his
pocket and without opening it or looking at it, said:--

"I wrote it the other day beside Thoreau's grave. You love your
Thoreau--you will understand."

And then in a low, thrilling voice, t