"Why," said he, quite slowly, "it's--it's just as though some cosmic
jester, all-powerful, had scooped up the fragments of a ruined city
and tossed them pell-mell into the core of the Adirondacks! It's
horrible--ghastly--incredible!"

Dazed and awed, he stood as in a dream, a strange figure with his mane
of hair, his flaming, trailing beard, his rags (for he had left the
bear-skin in the arcade), his muscular arm, knotted as he held the
sledge over his shoulder.

Well might he have been a savage of old times; one of the early
barbarians of Britain, perhaps, peering in wonder at the ruins of some
deserted Roman camp.

The chatter of a squirrel high up somewhere in the branches of an oak,
recalled him to his wits. Down came spiralling a few bits of bark and
acorn-shell, quite in the old familiar way.

Farther off among the woods, a robin's throaty morning notes drifted
to him on the odorous breeze. A wren, surprisingly tame, chippered
busily. It hopped about, not ten feet from him, entirely fearless.

Stern realized that it was now seeing a man for the first time in its
life, and that it had no fear. His bushy brows contracted as he
watched the little brown body jumping from twig to twig in the pine
above him.

A deep, full breath he drew. Higher, still higher he raised his head.
Far through the leafy screen he saw the overbending arch of sky in