Page:The heart of Monadnock (IA heartofmonadnock00timl).pdf/15

 ing their tough roots along the surface of the resisting granite, and pouring the smaller rootlets like molten metal into every crack and cranny. Further down the slopes their hard, cold emerald melts into sunny, mellow green of the maples and birches and poplars that flaunt their gay skirts around the mountain's base, like living flounces.

A hundred years ago, or more, report says, these craggy and almost inaccessible ravines, as they were then, were lairs of wild wolf-packs whose prowlings played havoc with the woolly flocks far below. The desperate farmers at last combined to make an end of these trackless, inaccessible lurking grounds and they set fire to the whole vast triangle. A Titanic conflagration! But out of this fierce battle-ground of flame and rock and crouching, murderous tangle, came at last with the healing years, to the vision of mankind, the rocky, tree-