The muffled hammering of a woodpecker, building its nest, came from a hollow tree at a little distance. A flock of kingbirds dashed boisterously through the underbrush. The pewees began their pitiful cry of "Lost! lost!" a scarlet tanager sat like a sentinel on a dead branch and challenged them with a sharp single note. The whole air grew full of that strenuous, mysterious wood-sound which is next to silence--the voice and movement of millions of living things too small for sight. It rose to a full orchestra as the two human listeners sat motionless, though only a few notes were familiar to Neckart--the tic-tic of the grasshoppers, the low monotone of countless unseen springs escaping under the grass, the lone call of the thrush, a single minor note from a golden bugle. But it was not the grasshoppers or thrush to which he listened breathlessly: it was the soft breathing of the young girl beside him, as she sat attentive, a quiet delight in her face, her blue eyes gathering soft lustre. Nature, when she and the world were young, might have looked with such motherly tenderness on all her living things. Her large nervous hands were clasped about her knees: the yellow hair glistened close beside him, and as her full bosom rose and fell he could hear her heart beat in the silence. He stood up quickly with a shiver: "Shall we go to the house?" She rose: "Yes, if you will. They are learning to know me now. I come here every day. There is a partridge lives under that bush, and he came out and actually let me see him drum once, and yesterday I found a blacksnake attacking a bluebird's nest in time to help fight the battle." They had reached the hedge: Neckart held apart the thorny bushes, but did not give her his hand to help her through, as he would have done to any other woman. He was always scant in personal courtesies to her. She looked back at the woods: "Yes, there they all live and keep house, and marry and quarrel and die. It does not concern them at all what man you make President, Mr. Neckart. It is very hard to make their acquaintance. I think they ought to know their friends at sight." "I don't know. I know two human beings," said Neckart gravely, "who, when they first met, felt a strong mutual antipathy, and now they--" She turned, looking keenly at him. "They are good friends, Miss Swendon," looking into her eyes. "Yes. There could not be any better," putting out her hand frankly. He held it but an instant, as he might have done a boy's when offered to him; but as she turned away a soft lovely color dyed her throat and face. "There is so much wild mint growing here," she said incoherently, stooping to gather it, "and pennyroyal, and a plenty of sweet basil. I am going to have an herb- and seed-room, and give out the seeds to Twiss myself next spring. I have not told you any of the news. Father has slept every night without a tonic. Don't you think his color is better? Did you see him yesterday?" anxiously.