The hither side of the bridge became more and more familiar, the farther side more and more desired. I knew the road to the school-house and to our three neighbors, all of whom I was accustomed to address as uncles and aunts. There was a fourth neighbor and nearer, yet there was a distance of some social kind. They were spoken of as Captain and Mistress Barber. To this house, a great Colonial mansion, with windows as large as those of the meeting-house, I was often sent on errands. No matter how often, I could not deliver my message, or note or borrowed salt without the greatest confusion. I felt my breath give way, something fill my throat. It was the words I was told to say over and over, repeated all the way until I was too full for utterance. Mistress Barber looked down upon me with her long white face and was able to guess the purpose of the boy's mission through his stammering and embarrassment. In her gentle, affable voice, as I now recall it, I recognise the tone of a lady. She would inquire when the errand was done if the little boy would like an apple or a cake. The question was too difficult; so she gave him both. As I turned away I passed under the great pine tree standing a little way from the mansion. It stood alone and it still stands two centuries old, in ample space and in consequence has grown symmetrical in form and luxuriant with foliage. It had realised the promise of its youth, a fate which happens to few trees in a forest. From its first majestic upward sweeping limbs to its tufted top reigned solemn and perpetual night. The wind scarcely swayed its dense and plumy branches. It merely turned up the silvery sides of the five-fingered clusters of needles which responded with a low melancholy voice like an aeolian harp, or those minor chords composed under its shade by my friend the Flute Player of Bellingham. In the woods when the pines sing it is not these I hear but the lone tree by the Barber mansion. It was the only tree in my reach I had never climbed. I was afraid of its dark mysterious recesses--also of Captain Barber.