Among the anonymous papers she received was one which exercised her curiosity to an extraordinary degree.  She felt a strong suspicion that “the Sachem,” as the boat-crews used to call him, “the Recluse,” “the Night-Hawk,” “the Sphinx,” as others named him, must be the author of it.  It appeared to her the production of a young person of a reflective, poetical turn of mind.  It was not a woman’s way of writing; at least, so thought the Secretary.  The writer had travelled much; had resided in Italy, among other places.  But so had many of the summer visitors and residents of Arrowhead Village.  The handwriting was not decisive; it had some points of resemblance with the pencilled orders for books which Maurice sent to the Library, but there were certain differences, intentional or accidental, which weakened this evidence.  There was an undertone in the essay which was in keeping with the mode of life of the solitary stranger.  It might be disappointment, melancholy, or only the dreamy sadness of a young person who sees the future he is to climb, not as a smooth ascent, but as overhanging him like a cliff, ready to crush him, with all his hopes and prospects.  This interpretation may have been too imaginative, but here is the paper, and the reader can form his own opinion: 

          Mythree companions.

“I have been from my youth upwards a wanderer.  I do not mean constantly flitting from one place to another, for my residence has often been fixed for considerable periods.  From time to time I have put down in a notebook the impressions made upon me by the scenes through which I have passed.  I have long hesitated whether to let any of my notes appear before the public.  My fear has been that they were too subjective, to use the metaphysician’s term,—­that I have seen myself reflected in Nature, and not the true aspects of Nature as she was meant to be understood.  One who should visit the Harz Mountains would see—­might see, rather his own colossal image shape itself on the morning mist.  But if in every mist that rises from the meadows, in every cloud that hangs upon the mountain, he always finds his own reflection, we cannot accept him as an interpreter of the landscape.

“There must be many persons present at the meetings of the Society to which this paper is offered who have had experiences like that of its author.  They have visited the same localities, they have had many of the same thoughts and feelings.  Many, I have no doubt.  Not all,—­no, not all.  Others have sought the companionship of Nature; I have been driven to it.  Much of my life has been passed in that communion.  These pages record some of the intimacies I have formed with her under some of her various manifestations.

“I have lived on the shore of the great ocean, where its waves broke wildest and its voice rose loudest.

“I have passed whole seasons on the banks of mighty and famous rivers.