As he proceeded to put his own household effects into that perfunctory and curious disarray which the masculine mind accounts order, he glanced out of the window now and again, thinking to see the evicted tenant returning to find his household gods thus upset, and heaped together and cast out. So bent was he upon this that after his expeditious settlement of his household affairs he seated himself on the step of the little porch, and smoked, as he leaned, with his hands behind his head, against the post, and watched the meagre treasure with intent eyes. He did not recognize his resolution in any sense as softening, but when the unknown intruder should come back, and thus learn this pointed lesson of the absolute rights of ownership, he held in contemplation the return of the cast-out gear to the house, and an invitation to abide for a time. As he sat there the river sang,—sang aloud to the listening, silent mountains, an archaic lay, so full of a sentiment of a vital individuality, an undying spirit, that it must have been voiced by some finer essences than are known to our dull modern density. He could hear the woods declaiming in vibrant periods, although he could translate none of these dryadic tones that came from the trees. The bees droned around his mother’s flowers; a butterfly, more splendidly caparisoned than any blossom, dandered about the old neglected garden and took to wing. And as he watched, naught came down the path but the reddening sunlight, loitering along to its home in the west. X.