"Well, we've made a pretty good start. We can come down here a lot of times between now and June." "But what for?" I asked. "Oh, for things. You haven't a sleeping bag yet, and we'll be thinking of other stuff right along. We can stay over a day in Boston, too, and get some things there. I always do that. You want a good many things. You can't get them in the woods, you know." Eddie was right about having plenty of time, for this was January. He was wrong, however, about being unable to get things in the woods. I did, often. I got Eddie's. Chapter Three _Now the gorges break and the streamlets wake_ _And the sap begins to flow,_ _And each green bud that stirs my blood_ _Is a summons, and I must go._ Chapter Three Eddie could not wait until June. When the earliest April buds became tiny, pale-green beads--that green which is like the green of no other substance or season--along certain gray branches in the park across the way, when there was a hint and flavor of stirring life in the morning sun, then there came a new bristle into Eddie's hair, a new gleam into his glasses, and I felt that the wood gods were calling, and that he must obey. "It is proper that one of us should go on ahead," he argued, "and be arranging for guides, canoes and the like at the other end." I urged that it was too soon--that the North was still white and hard with cold--that preliminaries could be arranged by letter. I finally suggested that there were still many things he would want to buy. He wavered then, but it was no use. Eddie can put on a dinner dress with the best and he has dined with kings. But he is a cave-, a cliff- and a tree-dweller in his soul and the gods of his ancestors were not to be gainsaid. He must be on the ground, he declared, and as for the additional articles we might need, he would send me lists. Of course, I knew he would do that, just as I knew that the one and mighty reason for his going was to be where he could smell the first breath of the budding North and catch the first flash and gleam of the waking trout in the nearby waters.