aside, skirting the wood to follow the incline, and presently the little
trail he now followed vanished utterly, leaving him and his horse adrift
breast-high in this green and yellow sea of fronds. But Mr. Hamlin,
imperious of obstacles, and touched by some curiosity, continued to
advance lazily, taking the bearings of a larger red-wood in the centre
of the grove for his objective point. The elastic mass gave way before
him, brushing his knees or combing his horse's flanks with wide-spread
elfin fingers, and closing up behind him as he passed, as if to
obliterate any track by which he might return. Yet his usual luck did
not desert him here. Being on horseback, he found that he could detect
what had been invisible to the boy and probably to all pedestrians,
namely, that the growth was not equally dense, that there were certain
thinner and more open spaces that he could take advantage of by more
circuitous progression, always, however, keeping the bearings of the
central tree. This he at last reached, and halted his panting horse.
Here a new idea which had been haunting him since he entered the wood
took fuller possession of him. He had seen or known all this before!
There was a strange familiarity either in these objects or in the
impression or spell they left upon him. He remembered the verses! Yes,
this was the "underbrush" which the poetess had described: the gloom
above and below, the light that seemed blown through it like the wind,
the suggestion of hidden life beneath this tangled luxuriance, which she
alone had penetrated,--all this was here. But, more than that, here was
the atmosphere that she had breathed into the plaintive melody of her
verse. It did not necessarily follow that Mr. Hamlin's translation of
her sentiment was the correct one, or that the ideas her verses had
provoked in his mind were at all what had been hers: in his easy
susceptibility he was simply thrown into a corresponding mood of
emotion and relieved himself with song. One of the verses he had already
associated in his mind with the rhythm of an old plantation melody, and