The lone pine stood in Brower's pasture, just clear of the woods.

When the sun rose, one could see its taper shadow stretching away to the foot of Woody Ledge, and at sunset it lay like a fallen mast athwart the cow-paths, its long top arm a flying pennant on the side of Bowman's Hill.

In summer this bar of shadow moved like a clock-hand on the green dial of the pasture, and the help could tell the time by the slant of it.

Lone Pine had a mighty girth at the bottom, and its bare body tapered into the sky as straight as an arrow.

Uncle Eb used to say that its one long, naked branch that swung and creaked near the top of it, like a sign of hospitality on the highway of the birds, was two hundred feet above ground.