He uncoiled a few yards of this
and fastened it to the knob of a door. Then he threw the loose end out
of the window so that it should hang by the open casement of Elsie's
room. By this he let himself down opposite her window, and with a
slight effort swung himself inside the room. He lighted a match, found
a candle, and, having lighted that, looked curiously about him, as
Clodius might have done when he smuggled himself in among the Vestals.
Elsie's room was almost as peculiar as her dress and ornaments. It was
a kind of museum of objects, such as the woods are full of to those
who have eyes to see them, but many of them such as only few could
hope to reach, even if they knew where to look for them. Crows' nests,
which are never found but in the tall trees, commonly enough in the
forks of ancient hemlocks, eggs of rare birds, which must have taken a
quick eye and hard climb to find and get hold of, mosses and ferns of
unusual aspect, and quaint monstrosities of vegetable growth, such as
Nature delights in, showed that Elsie had her tastes and fancies like
any naturalist or poet.
Nature, when left to her own freaks in the forest, is grotesque and
fanciful to the verge of license, and beyond it. The foliage of trees
does not always require clipping to make it look like an image of
life. From those windows at Canoe Meadow, among the mountains, we
could see all summer long a lion rampant, a Shanghai chicken, and
General Jackson on horse-back, done by Nature in green leaves, each
with a single tree.
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