Dear secret Greenness, nursed below
Tempests and winds and winter nights!
Vex not that but one sees thee grow;
That One made all these lesser lights.

HENRY VAUGHAN.


It was, of course, quite by accident that Sutherland had met
Margaret in the fir-wood. The wind had changed during the night,
and swept all the clouds from the face of the sky; and when he
looked out in the morning, he saw the fir-tops waving in the
sunlight, and heard the sound of a south-west wind sweeping through
them with the tune of running waters in its course. It is a
well-practised ear that can tell whether the sound it hears be that
of gently falling waters, or of wind flowing through the branches of
firs. Sutherland's heart, reviving like a dormouse in its hole,
began to be joyful at the sight of the genial motions of Nature,
telling of warmth and blessedness at hand. Some goal of life, vague
but sure, seemed to glimmer through the appearances around him, and
to stimulate him to action. Be dressed in haste, and went out to
meet the Spring. He wandered into the heart of the wood. The
sunlight shone like a sunset upon the red trunks and boughs of the
old fir-trees, but like the first sunrise of the world upon the new
green fringes that edged the young shoots of the larches. High up,
hung the memorials of past summers in the rich brown tassels of the
clustering cones; while the ground under foot was dappled with
sunshine on the fallen fir-needles, and the great fallen cones which
had opened to scatter their autumnal seed, and now lay waiting for