The two comrade trees had the strange wisdom of their race, ages old and gathered into them through untold generations. They had their memories, their sympathies; they reached one another with language past our understanding. One fir grew lower on the mountainside than the other; it was like a man so stationed on a declivity that his head barely reaches to the shoulder of another man higher up. A slow bitter wind wandered through their boughs, smote their delicate boughs as though these were strings of harps. The two firs became like harpers of old with whitened locks and long hoary beards, harpers who never tire of the past, of great days gone by. The fir below, as the snowflakes became thicker on its locks and sifted in more closely about its neck, shook itself loose from them and spoke: “Comrade, the end for us draws near; the snow creeps up. To-night it will place its cap on my head. I shall close my eyes and follow all things into their sleep.” “Yes,” responded the fir above, “follow all things into their sleep. If all things were thus to sleep at last, why were they ever awakened? It is a mystery.” The slow wind caught the words and bore them outward across the land and outward across the sea: “Mystery--mystery--mystery.” Twilight deepened. The clouds trailed through the trees; the flakes were formed amid the branches; it was no longer the fall of the snow: the ice-drops rested where they were formed. At intervals, surrounded by clouds and darkness, the low communings of the two trees went on: “Where now is he, the strange human one, he of the long thoughts and the brief shadow?” “He thought he was immortal; to him everything else on the earth perished but he was immortal. Where is he now?” “Once when he was very proud he said that he had a Creator who made him to lie down in green pastures.” “He lies in white pastures. All the millions of his race lie in white pastures, not green pastures.” “Our fathers, the evergreens, came forth on the earth countless ages before he appeared; and we are still here untold ages since he disappeared--leaving not a trace of himself behind.” “The most fragile of the mosses was born before he was born and it outlasted him.” “The frailest fern was not so perishable.” “Yet he believed that he should have eternal youth.” “That his race would return to some Power who had sent it forth.” “That he was ever being borne onward to some far off divine event where there was justice.” “Where there was justice for all.” “He so loved justice yet so withheld justice.” “It was the first thing he demanded and the last thing he meted out.” Darkness now overhung the mountain top, deep night above. At intervals the firs, being fast covered with snow, went on with their broken talk which wandered back and forth along the track of ages. They had but a few minutes for their thoughts of the ages and they lingered here and there as they willed.