growths were indicative of certain localities only, but, as they were
not remunerative from a pecuniary point of view, were to be avoided by
the sagacious woodman. It was clear, therefore, that Mr. Bowers's
visit to Green Springs was not professional, and that he did not even
figuratively accept the omen.

He baited and rested his horse at the hotel, where his bucolic exterior,
however, did not elicit that attention which had been accorded to Mr.
Hamlin's charming insolence or the editor's cultivated manner. But he
glanced over a township map on the walls of the reading-room, and took
note of the names of the owners of different lots, farms, and ranches,
passing that of Delatour with the others. Then he drove leisurely in the
direction of the woods, and, reaching them, tied his horse to a young
sapling in the shade, and entered their domain with a shambling but
familiar woodman's step.

It is not the purpose of this brief chronicle to follow Mr. Bowers in
his professional diagnosis of the locality. He recognized Nature in one
of her moods of wasteful extravagance,--a waste that his experienced
eye could tell was also sapping the vitality of those outwardly robust
shafts that rose around him. He knew, without testing them, that half of
these fair-seeming columns were hollow and rotten at the core; he could
detect the chill odor of decay through the hot balsamic spices stirred
by the wind that streamed through their long aisles,--like incense
mingling with the exhalations of a crypt. He stopped now and then to
part the heavy fronds down to their roots in the dank moss, seeing
again, as he had told the editor, the weird SECOND twilight through
their miniature stems, and the microcosm of life that filled it. But,
even while paying this tribute to the accuracy of the unknown poetess,
he was, like his predecessor, haunted more strongly by the atmosphere