waterfall, and anon like a retreating army, and again low
and sad; and he saw pictures in the glowing embers, strange
as dreams.

Presently he rose and, climbing to the loft, he stretched
himself out, and soon fell asleep.


When the gray dawn broke he was on his way, 'cross-country,
to the village of Pine.

During the night the wind had shifted and the rain had
ceased. A suspicion of frost shone on the grass in open
places. All was gray -- the parks, the glades -- and deeper,
darker gray marked the aisles of the forest. Shadows lurked
under the trees and the silence seemed consistent with
spectral forms. Then the east kindled, the gray lightened,
the dreaming woodland awoke to the far-reaching rays of a
bursting red sun.

This was always the happiest moment of Dale's lonely days,
as sunset was his saddest. He responded, and there was
something in his blood that answered the whistle of a stag
from a near-by ridge. His strides were long, noiseless, and
they left dark trace where his feet brushed the dew-laden
grass.

Dale pursued a zigzag course over the ridges to escape the
hardest climbing, but the "senacas" -- those parklike
meadows so named by Mexican sheep-herders -- were as round