“Well, you see in them days nobody stuck around a flat after what was easiest ter git was worked out. Everybody jest naturally went somewhere else ter find somethin’ else that was easy ter git and so, bimeby, thar wan’t nobody left here at Harmon’s but me. Yes, sir, nobody but me. An’ bein’ young an’ foolish, bimeby I went, too. Shook her. But--I allers kept comin’ back. Then, when it seemed as if thar wan’t nothin’ left anywhere, and all them railroads kem to Californy, and there wan’t no other place left to go, I come back here to stay. An’ so--here I be. Right here. An’--I reckon I’ll stay here till I die. It ain’t so much the findin’ gold, with me, as it is that I’m so used ter this here place. Seems like I know every tree in this here flat, and they’re all friends of mine. Why, I talk ter ’em, I do. They was one blow down, last spring, one that I always called ‘Old Sam,’ because he was so big and husky and had been here so long before I came, and he looked ter me like he might be the granddaddy of all trees, and I got ter sort of love him. “It sounds mighty foolish, but on the mornin’ after the big storm when I saw that Old Sam was done, I sat down on him an’ felt like cryin’ and was sort of deespirited, because it was as if I, too, was a-gitin’ old and some day all the other trees, these friends of mine, would wake up in the mornin’ and find that I’d gone, too, and wasn’t never goin’ ter be seen around, or heard talkin’ ter ’em any more.” Invariably, at this finish, as if suddenly aware of his loquacity; his betrayal of sentiment; his slipped confession, he would recover, cackle, pretend to make a joke, and hide his abashment. And invariably the partners joined in his laugh, but it was never a laugh that reached their eyes, for always they knew that he had voiced his heart. Each of them, shy, outwardly rough, inwardly sentimental, had known hills and trees they had loved. They, too, lived in the world of outdoors, where everything of life has its characteristics, its entity, its individuality, its struggle to live. They, too, sometimes believed that trees observe, confide, or perhaps love comrades. “I kin always scratch up enough dust for bacon and beans, by workin’ the old dumps with my old Long Tom or a string of sluices,” Old Harmless once explained. “Nobody bothers me here. Nobody ever comes to see me but you two young fellers; but I ain’t lonesome. And some day, maybe I’ll find the ledge that throwed the gold in this here gulch, and----” When he stopped and stared at the crests of the hills, as if thinking of such an achievement, David asked impulsively: “And--and what’ll you do then, Bill?”