gathered at a moist spot, scatter like autumn leaves before a gust of
wind at my approach, dancing away on fairy wings like golden sunbeams.

[Illustration: IT CLIMBS THE HILL FOR A BROADER VIEW]

At a place where the road makes a bend to the right, and the cat-tails
and rushes grow in profusion, a blue heron, that spirit of the marsh,
stands grotesque and sedate, and gazes with melancholy air into the
water. Bullfrogs pipe, running the whole gamut of tones from treble to
bass, hidden away amid the water grasses. Darning needles dodge in and
out among the rushes in erratic flight, and a blackbird teeters up and
down on a tulle stem while repeating over and over his pleasant
"O-ko-lee."

But the road does not stop to look or listen, and once more it climbs
the hill where the golden poppy basks in the sunshine, and the
dandelions spread their yellow carpet for it to pass over, or, nodding
silken heads scatter their tiny fleet of a hundred fairy balloons upon
the wings of the summer winds.

Down the road, whistling blithely, comes a slip of a boy, with fishing
rod, cut from the adjacent thicket, over his shoulder and a can of
bait tucked securely under his arm, happy as a king in anticipation of
the fish he may never catch. At his heels trots contentedly a yellow
dog. True companions of the highway are they, for no country road
would be complete without its boy and dog, and as I pass them I call
back, "Good luck, my doughty fisherman," and the road answers--or was
it an echo?--"Good luck, good luck."

But at last the shadows creep down cañon and hillside, the soft light