This is a story of the Earth Festival on the Earth Shield.
I. THE MAN AND THE SECRET
A man sat writing near a window of an old house out in the country a
few years ago; it was afternoon of the twenty-third of December.
One of the volumes of a work on American Forestry lay open on the desk
near his right hand; and as he sometimes stopped in his writing and
turned the leaves, the illustrations showed that the long road of his
mental travels--for such he followed--was now passing through the
evergreens.
Many notes were printed at the bottoms of the pages. They burned there
like short tapers in dim places, often lighting up obscure faiths and
customs of our puzzled human race. His eyes roved from taper to taper,
as gathering knowledge ray by ray. A small book lay near the large
one. It dealt with primitive nature-worship; and it belonged in the
class of those that are kept under lock and key by the libraries which
possess them as unsafe reading for unsafe minds.
Sheets of paper covered with the man's clear, deliberate handwriting
lay thickly on the desk. A table in the centre of the room was strewn
with volumes, some of a secret character, opened for reference.
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