has no memory; that was sere yesterday, is green to-day, will be sere
again to-morrow, then green once more; that pauses not for wounds and
wrecks, nor lingers over death and change; but onward, ever onward,
along the groove of law, passes from its red origin in universal flame
to its white end in universal snow.

And yet, as I approached the edge of the forest, it was as though an
invisible company of influences came gently forth to meet me and sought
to draw me back into their old friendship. I found myself stroking the
trunks of the trees as I would throw my arm around the shoulders of a
tried comrade; I drew down the branches and plunged my face into the
new leaves as into a tonic stream.

Yesterday a wind storm swept this neighborhood. Later, deep in the
woods, I came upon an elm that had been struck by a bolt at the top.
Nearly half the trunk had been torn away; and one huge limb lay across
my path.

As I stood looking at it, the single note of a bird fell on my
ear--always the same note, low, quiet, regular, devoid of feeling, as
though the bird had been stunned and were trying to say: _What can I
do_? _What can I do_? _What can I do_?

I knew what that note meant. It was the note with which a bird now and
then lingers around the scene of the central tragedy of its life.

After a long search I found the nest, crushed against the ground under
the huge limb, and a few feet from it, in the act of trying to escape,
the female. The male, sitting meantime on the end of a bough near by,
watched me incuriously, and with no change in that quiet, regular,