throbbing with the hope of maternity. Two spirits abroad in the air,
encountering each other and passing into one: the spirit of scentless spring
left by melting snows and the spirit of scented summer born with the
earliest buds. The road through the forest one of those wagon-tracks that
were being opened from the clearings of the settlers, and that wound along
beneath trees of which those now seen in Kentucky are the unworthy
survivors--oaks and walnuts, maples and elms, centuries old, gnarled,
massive, drooping, majestic, through whose arches the sun hurled down only
some solitary spear of gold, and over whose gray-mossed roots some cold
brook crept in silence; with here and there billowy open spaces of wild rye,
buffalo grass, and clover on which the light fell in sheets of radiance;
with other spots so dim that for ages no shoot had sprung from the deep
black mould; blown to and fro across this wagon-road, odours of ivy,
pennyroyal and mint, mingled with the fragrance of the wild grape; flitting
to and fro across it, as low as the violet-beds, as high as the sycamores,
unnumbered kinds of birds, some of which like the paroquet are long since
vanished.

Down it now there came in a drowsy amble an old white bob-tail horse, his
polished coat shining like silver when he crossed an expanse of sunlight,
fading into spectral paleness when he passed under the rayless trees; his
foretop floating like a snowy plume in the light wind, his unshod feet,
half-covered by the fetlocks, stepping noiselessly over the loamy earth; the
rims of his nostrils expanding like flexible ebony; and in his eyes that
look of peace which is never seen but in those of petted animals.

He had on an old bridle with knots of blue violets hanging, down at his
ears; over his broad back was spread a blanket of buffalo-skin; on this
rested a worn black side-saddle, and sitting in the saddle was a girl, whom
every young man of the town not far away knew to be Amy Falconer, and whom