The woods were cool and green and full of lovely light. It was so
still and peaceful, too! The tiny queer noises all about, which once,
before he knew the kingdom of the forest, had frightened him so much,
now filled John with the keenest joy. Often he paused and listened
eagerly. He liked to feel that he was surrounded everywhere by little
brothers, seen and unseen. With a word to Brutus, which made the dog
lie down and keep perfectly quiet, John would steal forward softly and
peer through a screen of bushes, or into a treetop, and watch the
housekeeping of some shy brother beast or bird. Once he flung himself
flat on the ground, and lay for a long time eagerly watching the antics
of a beetle. A little later, with Brutus patiently beside him, he sat
cross-legged for ten minutes, waiting to see how a certain big yellow
spider would spin her web between two branches of a rose-bush.

They wandered on and on. A great golden butterfly rose before them
from a bed of lilies, and together he and Brutus ran after it; not to
capture and kill it, oh no! for to John the wonder of the flower with
wings lay in the life which gave it power to move about and pay calls
upon the other blossoms that must be always stay-at-homes. John chased
it gaily, as one brother plays with another. And when it lighted on a
rose-bush or a yellow broom-flower, or poised on a swaying blade of
grass, he crept up and admired its lovely colors without touching the
fragile thing. But at last, as if suddenly remembering an errand which
it had forgotten, the butterfly soared quickly up and away over the
treetops and out of sight.

"Good-by, little brother!" called John after it. "I wish I could fly
as you do and look down upon the kingdom of the forest! Then indeed I
would learn all the secrets of our friends up in the treetops there,
who hide their nests so selfishly. Oh, I should so love to see all the