No! It was gone, but its voices seemed to have left gaping wounds across the violated air, and the trees to wear a look of desecration.

But presently the moon arose and washed the solitude clean again, and the wounds of silence were healed in the still night.
Next morning I amused myself by writing the following notice, which I nailed up on a great elm-tree standing guard at the beginning of the woods: SILENCE! _Speaking above a whisper in these woods is forbidden by law_.
This notice seems to have had its effect, for from this time on no more hands of marauders invaded my peace.

But I had one other case of trespass, of which it is now time to speak.
Some short distance from the shack was a clearing in the woods, a thriving wilderness of bramble-bushes, poke-berries, myrtle-berries, mandrakes, milkweed, mullein, daisies and what not--a paradise of every sauntering vine and splendid, saucy weed.

In the centre stood a sycamore-tree, beneath which it was my custom to smoke a morning pipe and revolve my profound after-breakfast thoughts.
Judge, then, of my indignant shock, one morning, at finding a stranger calmly occupying my place.

I stood for a moment rooted to the spot, in the shadow of the encircling woods, and he had not yet seen me.