The little folk of the forests are so companionable when you know them; even the same butterflies will come again and again. I recently spent two hours a day for a fortnight in this spot, and all the time apparently the same butterfly hovered about the door, resting every few minutes on the warm rock among the stone-crop and fiercely chasing off any other butterfly that came within its evidently marked-out domain. And the little folk never bore you with their boastings, nor weary you with platitudes. They are content to let you think your own thoughts, to take you as you are, if you will but recollect that theirs are ancient privileges that have descended to them as a world-old heritage. It is you who, helpless in the grip of civilisation, sold your forest “hearth-rights” long since, and are now but a stranger, or at best a passing guest, in this out-door world that was man’s first home. * * * * * Gradually quiet possesses you, and you hear the trees talking of things that have far outstripped the clash and turmoil of modernity. What is it they say, those swaying boughs and branches that throb with every wind, and these that stand around you, silently, waiting their last service to man, each with some final sacrificial offering—the apple-wood giving in incense, the oak giving in strength, and the laurel giving in flame? Theirs is a blessing rather than a message; a lifting of a load from the over-burdened heart rather than the teaching of stern lessons. And as you shake off some of the dust of earth that has clogged your soul, you find yourself sending out thoughts in directions long forgotten; the things of earth take on new proportions, the first being often last, and the last becoming first. * * * * * The ministry of the forest trees can never be entirely explained; but one remembers with reverence that our Lord Himself worked in some such little wood-house, where He touched the trees and fashioned the timber with His sacred Hands. Haply He left His Benediction when He passed that way. XIII Abigail’s “Lonely Sailor” I’M sure I didn’t start my career of usefulness with any intention of adopting a “lonely sailor.” It was Abigail who bestowed him upon me. So far as I remember, it was something like this. Abigail had joined “The Domestic Helpers’ Branch” of a Guild, organised by some well-meaning souls, for the purpose of befriending those men in the Army and Navy who are supposed to be without feminine kith or kin of any description to take an interest in them. She had been lured to a Guild meeting by her friend Pamela. Pamela, it should be explained, was my parlour-maid, originally, but when the national trumpet sounded for the reduction of one’s staff of employees, she had moved a little further along the road, to “The Gables,” a household that fancied they needed a parlour-maid worse than I did.