commonest trees wear green and silver then that would outshine a
coronation robe, and if a man has any of that prodigality of spirit
which makes imagination, he may hear the song of all the world.

It was on such a May morning in the midst of a great forest of pine
trees, one of those forests whose floors are moss-covered ruins that
give to them the solemnity of age and demand humility from those who
walk within their silences. There was not much there to tell of the
springtime, for the pines are unsympathetic, but it seemed as if all
the more wealth had been flung about on the carpeting beneath. Where
the moss was not were flowing beds of fern, and the ground was
dotted with slender harebells and the dusty, half-blossomed
corydalis, while from all the rocks the bright red lanterns of the
columbine were dangling.

Of the beauty so wonderfully squandered there was but one witness, a
young man who was walking slowly along, stepping as it seemed where
there were no flowers; and who, whenever he stopped to gaze at a
group of them, left them unmolested in their happiness. He was tall
and slenderly built, with a pale face shadowed by dark hair; he was
clad in black, and carried in one hand a half-open book, which,
however, he seemed to have forgotten.

A short distance ahead was a path, scarcely marked except where the
half-rotted trees were trodden through. Down this the young man
turned, and a while later, as his ear was caught by the sound of
falling water, he quickened his steps a trifle, until he came to a
little streamlet which flowed through the forest, taking for its bed
the fairest spot in that wonderland of beauty. It fled from rock to
rock covered with the brightest of bright green moss and with tender