"How bright the sun shine!" he exclaimed. "Snow an' ice go.
Spring--heem here!"




CHAPTER VII


ON THE TRAIL OF GOLD

And each day thereafter the sun rose earlier, and the day was longer,
and the air was warmer; and with the warmth there now came the sweet
scents of the budding earth and the myriad sounds of the deep, unseen
life of the forests, awakening from its long slumber in its bed of
snow. The moose-birds chirped their mating songs and flirted from
morning till night in bough and air, and the jays and ravens fluffed
themselves in the sun, and the snowbirds, little black and white
beauties that were wont to whisk about like so many flashing gems,
became fewer and fewer, until they were gone altogether. The poplar
buds swelled more and more in their joy, until they split like
over-fat peas, and the partridges feasted upon them.

And Mother Bear came out of her winter den, accompanied by her little
ones born two months before, and taught them how to pull down the
slender saplings for these same buds; and the moose came down from the
blizzardy tops of the great ridges, which are called mountains in the
North, and where for good reasons they had passed the winter, followed
by the wolves, who fed upon their weak and sick. Everywhere there were
the rushing torrents of melting snows, the crackle of crumbling ice,