![]() ![]() The silvery sheen of the sunlight is reflected from its needles it still affords an inaccessible crotch for the squirrel’s nest not a lichen has forsaken its mast-like stem, its raking mast,-the hill is the hulk. Still its branches wave in the wind, as it were destined to stand for a century, and the wind soughs through its needles as of yore it is still a forest tree, the most majestic tree that waves over Musketaquid. But no, I was mistaken it has not moved an inch it stands at the same angle as at first. Now surely it is going it is inclined one quarter of the quadrant, and, breathless, I expect its crashing fall. Now the sawers stop, and with an axe open it a little on the side toward which it leans, that it may break the faster. ![]() I watch closely to see when it begins to move. ![]() ![]() It towered up a hundred feet as I afterward found by measurement, one of the tallest probably in the township and straight as an arrow, but slanting a little toward the hillside, its top seen against the frozen river and the hills of Conantum. I saw them like beavers or insects gnawing at the trunk of this noble tree, the diminutive manikins with their cross-cut saw which could scarcely span it. I resolved to watch it till it fell, the last of a dozen or more which were left when the forest was cut and for fifteen years have waved in solitary majesty over the sprout-land. “This afternoon, being on Fair Haven Hill, I heard the sound of a saw, and soon after from the Cliff saw two men sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty rods off. ![]()
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