Noisy little chipmunks sit up and nibble nervously at dainties they
have found, and flirt their tails and gossip, and scold the carping
bluejays that peer down from overhanging branches. Perhaps a hoot owl
in the hollow trees overhead opens amber eyes and blinks irritatedly
at the chattering, then wriggles his head farther down into his
feathers, stretches a leg and a wing and settles himself for another
nap.

Little streams go sliding down between banks of bright green grass,
and fuss over the mossy rocks that lie in their beds. Deer lift heads
often to listen and look and sniff the breeze between mouthfuls of the
tender twigs they love. Shambling, slack-jointed bears move shuffling
through the thickets, like the deer, lifting suspicious noses to test
frequently the wind, lest some enemy steal upon them unaware.

From his glass-walled eyrie, Jack Corey gazed down upon the wooded
slopes and dreamed of what they hid of beauty and menace and calm and
of loneliness. He saw them once drenched with rain; but mostly they
lay warm under the hot sunshine of summer. He saw them darkling with
night shadows, he saw them silvered with morning fogs which turned
rose tinted with the first rays of sunrise, he saw them lie
soft-shaded in the sunset's after glow, saw them held in the unearthly
beauty of the full moonlight.

Like the deer and the bear down there, his head was lifted often to
look and to sniff the wind that blew strongly over the peak. For now
the winds came too often tainted with the smoke of burning pines. The
blue haze of the far distance deepened with the thickening air. Four
times in the last ten days he had swung the pointer over the mapped
table and sighted it upon brown puffballs that rose over the