I particularly remember one afternoon when we sallied off into the woods together, on a sort of frolic that combined work and play, to gather the wild walnuts that grew abundantly in those parts. It was Yasma that suggested the expedition, and I had been quick to accept the proposal, which had brought back memories of boyhood "nutting parties" among the New Hampshire hills. As we set out through the forest on a little inconspicuous trail, it was indeed delightful to be together; and for the moment I was almost ready to bless the fate that had sent me to Sobul. What a rare companion she made that day! She would go darting and tripping ahead of me like a playful wild thing, and then, when I had lost sight of her amid the underbrush, she would startle me with a cry and would come running back in loud laughter. Or else she would enthusiastically point out the various trees crowded together in that virgin forest--the sedate oaks, the steeple-like deodars and pines, the alder and the ash, the juniper and wild peach; or, in places where the undergrowth was dense, she would show me species of wild rose and honeysuckle, of currants and hawthorn, of gooseberry and rhododendron, as well as of a score of native herbs whose names I have forgotten. Or her sharp eyes would spy out the birds' nests in the trees (nests that my untrained vision would never have detected), or she would call attention to some gray or blue or red-breasted moving thing, which would flash into view and slip away like some shy phantom into the twilight of the vines and shrubbery or amid the light-flecked, latticed roof of green. Occasionally, when not too busy dancing along the trail or playing some merry prank or pointing out the shrubs and flowers, she would sing a snatch of some native song--sing it in an untrained voice of a peculiar sweetness and power, which affected me strangely with its note of joy tinged always with an indefinable and haunting melancholy. At length, after perhaps an hour of this careless adventuring, I noticed that the ground was beginning to rise sharply, and judged that we were not far from the valley wall. And it was then that Yasma paused, clapping her hands in delight and pointing to a cluster of big, gracefully rounded trees, whose nature I recognized immediately, although their pinnate leaves were broader than those of the black or American walnut and their trunks were smoother and not so intensely brown.