down and the sun laughing, and the sparkle and
joyousness of it all! Ah, what a lucky dog was this
Oliver!

And the days that followed! Each one a delight--
each one happier than the one before. The sun
seemed to soak into his blood; the strength of the
great hemlocks with their giant uplifted arms seemed
to have found its way to his muscles. He grew
stronger, more supple. He could follow Hank all
day now, tramping the brook or scaling the sides of
Bald Face, its cheeks scarred with thunderbolts.
And with this joyous life there came a light into his
eyes, a tone in his voice, a spring and buoyancy in
his step that brought him back to the days when he
ran across Kennedy Square and had no care for the
day nor thought for the morrow. Before the week
was out he had covered half a dozen canvases with
pictures of the house as he saw it that first morning,
bathed in the sunshine; of the brook; the sweep of
the Notch, and two or three individual trees that he
had fallen in love with--a ragged birch in particular
--a tramp of a birch with its toes out of its shoes and
its bark coat in tatters.

Before the second week had arrived he had sought
the main stage-road and had begun work on a big
hemlock that stood sentinel over a turn in the highway.
There was a school-house in the distance and
a log-bridge under which the brook plunged. Here