The sun beat down on me in the treeless open field. My feet struck into a path. It, too, became a reminder: it had once been a trail of the wild animals of that verdurous wilderness. I followed its windings--a sort of gully--down a long, gentle slope. The windings had no meaning now: the path could better have been straight; it was devious because the feet that first marked it off had threaded their way crookedly hither and thither past the thick-set trees. I reached the spring--a dry spot under the hot sun; no tree overshadowing it, no vegetation around it, not a blade of grass; only dust in which were footprints of the stock which could not break the habit of coming to it but quenched their thirst elsewhere. The bulged front of some limestone rock showed where the ancient mouth of the spring had been. Enough moisture still trickled forth to wet a few clods. Hovering over these, rising and sinking, a little quivering jet of gold, a flock of butterflies. The grey stalk of a single dead weed projected across the choked orifice of the fountain and one long, brown grasshopper--spirit of summer dryness--had crawled out to the edge and sat motionless. A few yards away a young sycamore had sprung up from some wind-carried seed. Its grey-green leaves threw a thin scarred shadow on the dry grass and I went over and lay down under it to rest--my eyes fixed on the forest ruin. Years followed with their changes. I being in New York with my heart set on building whatever share I could of American literature upon Kentucky foundations, I at work on a novel, remembered that hot August afternoon, the dry spring, and in imagination restored the scene as it had been in the Kentucky of the pioneers. I now await with eagerness all further felicities that may originate in a woodland scene that did not exist. What else will grow for me out of ferns that never grew? PART SECOND EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS _King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire, England, May 1, 1911._ DEAR SIR: It is the first of the faithful leafy May again. I sit at my windows as on this day a year ago and look out with thankfulness upon what a man may call the honour of the vegetable world. A year ago to-day I, misled by a book of yours or by some books--for I believe I read more than one of them--I, betrayed by the phrase that when we touch a book we touch a man, overstepped the boundaries of caution as to having any dealings with glib, plausible strangers and wrote you a letter. I made a request of you in that letter. I thought the request bore with it a suitable reward: that I should be grateful if you would undertake to have some ferns sent to me for my collection. Your sleek reply led me still further astray and I wrote again. I drew my English cloak from my shoulders and spread it on the ground for you to step on. I threw open to you the doors of my hospitality, good-fellowship.