Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/239

 with a fine tracery of sepia-tinted hieroglyphics. We half feared, as we pried and pulled it from the tree, that we were carrying off a love sonnet in secret cipher left there by some forest-haunting Orlando of the hills for his Rosalind. This was Di’s find. Not long ago I saw it in her dining-room, fastened to the wall, holding a little squatty brown and yellow jug, from which trailed two or three pretty nasturtium vines, with their flaming blossoms.

Another time we took from an old stump a most striking facsimile of the bust of Shakespeare. It was of plastic material, much like paraffine wax, only cameo-tinted, and exquisite. As this was my discovery, I brought it home and gave it a background of black velvet.

But I must stop this rambling talk, and I will stop right now, by wishing you a happy Christmas and a glad New Year. I came near forgetting it. It is hard to realize the nearness of the holiday season, when one lives in the woods, hearing no Christmas talk, seeing none of the flutter and excitement of it, and the weather so far from Christmasy.

For several days dense fogs have enveloped the land. To-day even the hills are blotted out, and the fog creeping nigher has built a high wall of gray around yard and orchard,—one we can neither see through nor over. We feel like castaways on some lonely island, with the vague sea about us.