Mrs. Bogardus sighed with impatience, and Moya's face became set. “Well, here he quotes again,” she haughtily resumed. “Anybody who is tired of this can be excused. Emerson won't mind, and I'm sure Paul won't!” She looked a mute apology to Paul's mother, who smiled and said, “Go on, dear. I don't read Emerson either, but I like him when Paul reads him for me.” “Well, I warn you there is an awful lot of him here!” Moya's voice was a trifle husky as she read on. “Old as Jove, Old as Love'” “I thought Love was young!”--Christine in a whisper aside. “'Who of me Tells the pedigree? Only the mountains old, Only the waters cold, Only the moon and stars, My coevals are.'” Moya sighed, and sank into prose again. “There is a gaudy yellow moss in these woods that flecks the straight and mournful tree-trunks like a wandering glint of sunlight; and there is a crêpe-like black moss that hangs funeral scarfs upon the boughs, as if there had been a death in the forest, and the trees were in line for the burial procession. The grating of our voices on this supreme silence reminds one of 'Why will you still be talking, Monsieur Benedick?--nobody marks you.' “There are silences, and again there are whole symphonies of sound. The winds smites the tree-tops over our heads, a surf-like roar comes up the slope, and the yellow pine-needles fall across the deepest darks as motes sail down a sunbeam. One wearies of the constant perpendicular, always these stiff, columnar lines, varied only by the melancholy incline where some great pine-chieftain is leaning to his fall supported in the arms of his comrades, or by the tragic prostration of the 'down timber'--beautiful straight-cut English these woodsmen talk. “Last evening John and I sat by the stove in the men's tent, while the others were in the cabin playing penny-ante with the cook (a sodden brute who toadies to the Bowens, and sulks with John because he objected to our hiring the fellow--an objection which I sustained, hence his logical spite includes me). John was melting pine gum and elk tallow into a dressing for our boots. I took a mean advantage of him, his hands being in the tallow and the tent-flap down, and tried on him a little of--now, don't deride me!--'Wood Notes.' It is seldom one can get the comment of a genuine woodsman on Nature according to the poets.'” Moya read on perfunctorily, feeling that she was not carrying her audience with her, and longing for the time when she could take her letter away and have it all to herself. If she stopped now, Christine, in this sudden new freak of distrustfulness, would be sure to misunderstand. “'For Nature ever faithful is To such as trust her faithfulness. When the forest shall mislead me, When the night and morning lie, When sea and land refuse to feed me, Will be time enough to die.