"Ah! Ah!" said the tree, "it hurts, but one does not mind that when one is realizing an ambition. Now I shall go to the top." So he went over Kearsarge on mule-back quite like an old traveler.
"Well, we are rid of his complaining," said the pine who stood next to him, "and now I am the highest up of all the pines. I wonder if it is really so much finer on the other side."
His old companion, in four pieces, was swinging down the other side of the mountain, and as he went, he saw high peaks and soddy meadows, long winding cañons with white glancing waters; and heard the chorus of the falls. When it was night the miners lit a fire and loosened up the packs, and after dark, when the wind began to move among the trees and the fire burned low, one of the men threw a piece of the white-barked pine on it.
"Oh! Oh!" cried the pine as the flames caught hold of it, "and is this really the end of all my travels?"
"How that green wood sputters!" said the man; "it is not fit even for firewood."
The next day the wind took up the ash and carried it back over the pass, and dropped it where the chopped boughs lay fainting on the ground.
"Ah, is that you?" they said; "now you can tell us what it is like on the other side."
"How ignorant you are," said the ash of the white-barked pine, "one would know you have never traveled. It is exactly like this side." But he could not hear what they had to say to that, for the wind whirled him away.