hin a few paces of him. When he looked up at me it was as though his
eyes returned from some far journey. I felt at first out of focus,
unplaced, and only gradually coming into view. In his hand he held a
lump of earth containing a thrifty young plant of the purple
cone-flower, having several blossoms. He worked at the lump deftly,
delicately, so that the earth, pinched, powdered and shaken out, fell
between his fingers, leaving the knotty yellow roots in his hand. I
marked how firm, slow, brown, the old man was, how little obtrusive in
my field. One foot rested in a furrow, the other was set among the grass
of the margin, near the fence--his place, I thought.

His first words, though of little moment in themselves, gave me a
curious satisfaction, as when a coin, tested, rings true gold, or a
hero, tried, is heroic.

"I have rarely," he said, "seen a finer display of rudbeckia than this,
along these old fences."

If he had referred to me, or questioned, or apologised, I should have
been disappointed. He did not say, "your fences," he said "these
fences," as though they were as much his as mine. And he spoke in his
own world, knowing that if I could enter I would, but that if I could
not, no stooping to me would avail either of us.

"It has been a good autumn for flowers," I said inanely, for so many
things were flying through my mind that I could not at once think of the
great particular words which should bring us together. At first I
thought my chance had passed, but he seemed to see something in me after
all, for he said:

"Here is a peculiarly large specimen of the rudbeckia. Observe the deep
purple of the cone, and the bright yellow of the petals. Here is another
that grew hardly two feet away, in the grass near the fence where the
rails and the blackberry bushes have shaded it. How small and
undeveloped it is."

"They crowd up to the plowed land," I observed.

"Yes, they reach out for a better chance in life--like men. With more
room, better food, freer air, you see how much finer they grow."

It was curious to me, having hitherto barely observed the cone-flowers
along my fences, save as a colour of beauty, how simply we fell to
talking of them as though in truth they were people like ourselves,
having our desires and possessed of our capabilities. It gave me then,
for the first time, the feeling which has since meant such varied
enjoyment, of the peopling of the woods.

"See here," he said, "how differ