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Soil had fore oaks and pines flourished there as confidently as though in the heart of the Maine forest, crowding ash and beech for room

Under the --which was thickly overgroith ivy and with ferns and bushes rooted in the crannies--the pine-needles bent in deep, pungent beds

Birch, maple, poplar and all the natives of the American woods shouldered each other lustily By the state of the fresh young leaves, just bursting their sheaths, Stern knew the season waspatches of aze, as they played and quivered on the forest e, squared stones which here and there lay in disorder, and which Stern knew rew very thick; andthings

"How long has it been, great Heavens! How long?" cried the engineer, a sudden fear creeping into his heart For this, the reasserted do force than anything he had yet seen

About hie milieu

"Why," said he, quite slowly, "it's--it's just as though soments of a ruined city and tossed thehastly--incredible!"

Dazed and awed, he stood as in a drea, trailing beard, his rags (for he had left the bear-skin in the arcade), his e over his shoulder

Well e of old ti in wonder at the ruins of soh up somewhere in the branches of an oak, recalled hi a few bits of bark and acorn-shell, quite in the old fa the woods, a robin's throatynotes drifted to hily tame, chippered busily It hopped about, not ten feet from hi 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 ju in the pine above hiher he raised his head Far through the leafy screen he saw the overbending arch of sky in tiny patches of turquoise