When I come to tell of my demesne I don't know where to draw the line, for there are no boundary marks, and I can easily fancy "I am monarch of all I survey." I suppose I have a yard, for I shall think of the plateau in that way. Whoever built the Lodge cleared the level place in front, and around, of all trees and bushes. It is dry and barren now, and covered with dead leaves, but soon there will be a prying and a pushing of little green heads and I shall be kept busy if I don't want to be overrun and driven out. Beginning a short distance back of the Lodge, and continuing upward for perhaps a hundred feet, a thick band of pines and cedars belt the hill with a zone of perpetual green. Beyond this the vegetation dwindles, becomes scarcer, and finally ceases, leaving the apex of the knob absolutely bare. Below my plateau, and around, everywhere, as far as I can see, are trees, trees, trees. Trees of every size and every kind indigenous to the climate. Evergreens predominate. There are millions of them, but there are also wide expanses of oak, ash, beech, sycamore, elm, walnut, dogwood. Most of these have as yet not put forth the tiniest shoot. But here and there in the dun, brown stretches a dogwood has joyously flung out a thousand gleaming stars which shine, white and radiant, a pledge and a promise of the general resurrection nearhand. A moment gone I laid down my pen and stepped outside. How vast! How still! How illimitable! I had never felt my insignificance so keenly before. I seemed a tiny atom of dust. But as I stood and heard again those muffled chords from the mighty Harp, and saw the patient planets overhead again on guard, I suddenly knew that I was truly part and parcel of the Whole, and in my heart Hope gave birth to prayer. Now to bed, tired, but at peace, with both windows flung wide--it is 'Crombie's orders. CHAPTER FOUR IN WHICH I MEET A DRYAD A week has passed. Until to-day I had begun to fear that my proposed plan of making a book would come to naught. One would not care to read of a daily life consisting of getting up, eating, smoking, reading, strolling about and going to bed. That is all I have done until to-day, when something happened. But before I come to this, I must tell of the labor I undergo in procuring water.