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The choke-cherries crimsoning in the summer sun, the clusters of the nuts swelling among the leaves of the hickory will strive to attain perfection, whether or no there are human hands to gather them. They live in beauty, simplicity and serenity, all-sufficient in themselves to achieve their ends.
It was smooth inside and looked as if something had been pounded in it, as in a mortar. Presently we came upon a long, heavy hickory mallet, tapering at one end, smoothly rounded at the other. It had a short handle, and we thought it might have been a sort of pestle for the big mortar. But what had those old people ground in it? Westbury told us later; it had been their mill.
"Yes, you have," retorted Old Mother Nature. "I never have!" contradicted Chatterer, quite forgetting to whom he was speaking. But Old Mother Nature overlooked this. "I don't suppose you ever ate a chestnut or a fat hickory nut or a sweet beechnut," said she softly. "Of course," retorted Chatterer sharply. "I've eaten ever and ever and ever so many of them. What of it?"
A cavalry picket of the enemy at Burnt Hickory was captured, and had on his person an order from General Johnston, dated at Allatoona, which showed that he had detected my purpose of turning his position, and it accordingly became necessary to use great caution, lest some of the minor columns should fall into ambush, but, luckily the enemy was not much more familiar with that part of the country than we were.
Have been loafing here deep among the trees, shafts of tall pines, oak, hickory, with a thick undergrowth of laurels and grapevines the ground cover'd everywhere by debris, dead leaves, breakage, moss everything solitary, ancient, grim. Blue-birds, robins, meadow-larks begin to appear. Next day, 9th. A snowstorm in the morning, and continuing most of the day.
"I am glad to hear it," said her cousin. "Now give us our directions, Fleda, and thank you for your services." "Stop a minute," said Mr. Carleton. "What if you and I should try to find those same hickory trees, Miss Fleda? Will you take me with you? or is it too long a walk?" "For me? oh no!" said Fleda with a face of awakening hope; "but," she added timidly, "you were going a shooting, sir?"
Like a beaver's, they were formed of thin shells of hard enamel in front, backed up by softer pulp behind; and of course the soft parts wore away first, and left the enamel projecting in sharp, chisel-like edges that could gnaw crumbs from a hickory axe-handle. The next few months were pleasant ones, with plenty to eat, and nothing to do but keep his jaws going.
"Could we help you?" inquired Helen simply. The old sea man smiled and reached over to pat her shoulders. She was sitting on the steps, and he sat just above in the hickory arm chair. "I've been tryin' to figure out who might help me," he replied finally, "and I've about concluded you little girls would be as safe as anybody. And queer thing, too " he went on.
That night while the patriarch dozed in his hickory withed chair with his pipe drooping from his wrinkled lips his granddaughter slipped quietly out of the house and went over to the tree. Out there magic was making under an early summer moon that clothed the peaks in silvery softness and painted shadows of cobalt in the hollows.
The red dressing-gown advanced a step, and met her gaze. Dignity and terror shifted to relief. "Oh, Mr. Welles!" she gasped. Her lodger girded up his robe de chambre with its red silk cord and advanced with decision through the chaos of birch and hickory.
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