hed full,
the southern hillsides showed bare and gaunt.

In the lake cabin they felt aged by their imprisonment. It had been so
long, so remote from the world rush. Like prisoners long confined, they
were loath to leave a dungeon where life had been well ordered if not
exhilarating. Benumbed in the first days of the change, they returned
indoors to the soothing evenness of their six months' hibernation. They
found those first changes unbelievable. Winter would surely go on
forever; too mighty a jailer it was to be vanquished by a mere breath of
honey and flowers. They stayed in to warn one another against false
appearances.

But there came a day when, in the blaze of noontime, Ben Crider moved
his chair out by the door and sang softly to the strains of his guitar.
His eyes blinked in the sunlight as he sang, yet they did not fail to
detect the signs of spring so plentiful about the clearing in bud and
leaf and tiny grass shoot, even though patches of snow still lay in the
shaded spots.

The woman who cooked came also to the door as Ben sang. He had spoken of
her the winter through as "the woman," dimly perceiving her as a spirit
that mumbled endless complainings as she toiled, for she was one who
had been disillusioned by much cooking. She cooked acceptably, and Ben
had burgeoned in the uncanny luxury of food prepared by another hand
than his own, but he had given her little attention beyond discovering
her opinion that cooking was a barren performance, since people
perversely ate and thereby destroyed, and the thing must be done again
endlessly. He had vaguely observed that this woman was not beautiful,
and now, as she faced him with a sudden joviality in the spring
sunshine, he saw that she could never have been beautiful. She beamed
amicably on the balladist, and he, turning casual eyes on her, was
stricken to dismayed silence; the tuneful praise of young love fainted
on his lips as he stared, aghast, and his startled hand hushed the
vibrant strings. A moment he looked, recovering from the shock. Then, in
swift recoil, he grasped his chair and went resolutely out under the big
hemlock, there to resume his song and his absent contemplation of
Nature's awakening--his back to the cabin door. In this sensitive mood
he wished not to incur again a vision that blighted song.

It was no longer disputable that spring was real; no baseless tradition,
but an unfolding reality. Ben had divined it, and the other prisoners
we