Tommy took no notice of anything or anybody, but continued to gaze into the fire. That fire was well worth looking at, though I am not at all sure that Tommy saw it. It was a fire that made one drowsily contented and happy to sit by,—a comfort-giving, companionable sort of a fire. Built on the low hearth, with huge logs of wood sawn from the trunk of a poplar-tree that had succumbed to a summer squall, logs sawn from the roots of a sturdy old pine-tree that had weathered many and many a gale, and logs sawn from the withered limbs of a singularly gnarled and ancient pippin-tree that had grown and flourished in the orchard ever since this farmer’s father was a boy. There were huge lumps of coals there also, and a wall round the whole of dark-brown peats, hard enough to have cut and chiselled the hull of a toy yacht from.
It is not to be wondered at that Tommy took no notice of the somewhat commonplace talk that went on around him; he was listening to a conversation that was being carried on in the fire between the blazing wood and the coals and the peat.
“You have no idea, my friends,” said the poplar log, after emitting a hissing jet of steam by way of drawing attention and commanding silence—“you have no idea what a stately and beautiful tree I was when in my prime. I and my fellows, who were all alive and well when I heard from them last, were the tallest and most gracefully-waving trees in the country-side. Poets and artists, and clever people generally, used to say we gave quite a character to the landscape. We knew we were very beautiful, because the broad winding river went through the meadow where we stood, and all day long we could see our faces therein. O, we were very beautiful! I do assure you. The seasons thought so, and every one of them did something for us. Spring came first, as soon as she had fastened the downy buds on the waving willows; placed wee crimson-topped anemones on the hazel boughs—five to each nodding catkin; scattered the burgeons over the hawthorn hedges; tasselled the larches with vermilion and green; adorned the rocks with lichen and moss; brought early daisies to the meadow-lands, the gold of the celandine to the banks of the streamlets, and the silver of a thousand white starry buttercups to float on the ponds; breathed through the woods and awakened the birds to light, love, and song; led the bee to the crocus, the butterfly to the primrose; awakened even the drowsy dormouse and the shivering hedgehog from their long winter’s slumber, to peep hungrily from their holes and wearily wonder where food could be found. Then Spring came to us. Spring came and kissed us, and we responded with green-yellow leaves to her balmy caress. Ah, the sun’s rays looked not half so golden anywhere else, as seen through our glancing quivering foliage. We raised our heads so high in air, that the larks seemed to sing to us alone, and the very clouds told us their secrets.
“But Summer came next and changed our leaves to a darker, sturdier green. And she brought us birds. The rooks themselves used to rest and sway on our topmost branches, lower down the black-bibbed sparrows built; in our hollows the starlings laid their eggs of pearl, while even the blackbird had her nest among the ivy that draped our shapely stems.
“We were things of beauty even when winds of Autumn blew; and Winter himself must clothe our leafless limbs with its silvery hoar-frost, till every branch and twiglet looked like radiant coral against the deep blue of the cloudless sky.”
“Hush! hush!” cried the pine-tree root. “Dost thou well, O poplar-tree log, to boast thus of thy beauty and stateliness? I lived on the mountain brow not far off. I marked your rise and fall. Out upon your beauty! Where was your strength? To me thou wert but as a sapling, or a willow withe bending in the summer air. But my strength was as the strength of nations. On the hill yonder I flourished for hundreds of years; my foot was on the rocks, my dark head swept the clouds, my brown stem was a landmark for sailors far at sea. In the plains below I saw the seasons come and go. Houses were built, and in time became ruins; children were born, grew up, grew old and died, but I changed not. The wild birds of the air, of the rock, and the eyrie were my friends—the eagle, the osprey, the hawk, and curlew. The deer and the roe bounded swiftly past me, the timid coney and the hare found shelter near me. I have battled with a thousand gales; thunders rolled and lightnings flashed around me, and left me unscathed. I stood there as heroes stand when the battle rages fiercest, and my weird black fingers seemed to direct the hurricane wind. I was the spirit of the storm.
“And I too had beauty, an arboreal beauty that few trees can lay claim to; whether in autumn with the crimson heather all around me, in summer with the last red rays of sunset lingering in my foliage, or in winter itself—my branches silhouetted against the green of a frosty sky. But I fell at last. We all must fall, and age had weakened my roots. But I fell as giants fall, amidst the roar of the elements and chaos of strife. The skies wept over my bier, rain clouds were my pall, and the wild winds shrieked my dirge.”
There was silence in the fire for some little time after the pine log had finished speaking, and Tommy thought the conversation had ceased; but presently a voice, soft and musical as summer winds in the linden-tree, came from the gnarled pippin log:
“O men of pride and war!” said the voice, “I envy neither of you. Mine was a life of peace and true beauty; and had I my days to live over again, I would not have them otherwise. My home was in the orchard, and the seasons were good to me too, and all things loved me. In spring-time no bride was ever arrayed as I was; the very rustics that passed along the roads used to stop their horses to gaze at me in open-mouthed admiration. Then all the bees loved me, and all the birds sang to me, and the westling winds made dreamy music in my foliage. Lovers sat on the seat beneath my spreading branches, when the gloaming star was in the east, and told their tales of love heedless that I heard them. In summer merry children played near me and swung from my boughs, and in autumn and even winter many a family showered blessings on the good old pippin-tree. ‘Peace, my friends, hath its victories not less renowned than war.’”
“O dear me!” sighed a smouldering peat, “how humble I should feel in such company. I really have nothing to say and nothing to tell, for my life, if life it could be called, was spent on a lonesome moor; true, the heath bloomed beautiful there in autumn, but the wintry winds that swept across the shelterless plain had a dreary song to sing. The will o’ the wisp was a friend of mine, and an aged white-haired witch, that at the dead hours of moonlight nights used to come groaning past me, culling strange herbs, and using incantations that I shudder to hear. There were many strange creatures besides the witch that came to the moor where I dwelt; and even fairies danced there at times. But for the most part the strange creatures I saw took the form of creeping or flying things; fairies changed themselves into beautiful moths and wild bees, but brownies and spunkies to crawling toads and tritons. But heigho! I fear a poor peat has few opportunities of doing good in the world.”