erhead and darted along the limbs;
the ragged bark of the tree in front of them was suddenly full of
creeping things, busily hurrying up and down; the coffee-colored water
of the brook at their feet began to glance with silvery flashes of
minnows and wagtails; out of a miniature hill came a long procession of
ants; they marched, deployed, disappeared, and came again; monster
spiders, like lumps of glittering enamel, swung in the air by invisible
threads; two black beetles rose to view by Neckart's foot, rolling a
white ball twice as big as themselves toward a flicker of clear sunshine
on the grass.

"They are taking the babies for a sun-bath," whispered Jane.

The muffled hammering of a woodpecker, building its nest, came from a
hollow tree at a little distance. A flock of kingbirds dashed
boisterously through the underbrush. The pewees began their pitiful cry
of "Lost! lost!" a scarlet tanager sat like a sentinel on a dead branch
and challenged them with a sharp single note. The whole air grew full of
that strenuous, mysterious wood-sound which is next to silence--the
voice and movement of millions of living things too small for sight. It
rose to a full orchestra as the two human listeners sat motionless,
though only a few notes were familiar to Neckart--the tic-tic of the
grasshoppers, the low monotone of countless unseen springs escaping
under the grass, the lone call of the thrush, a single minor note from a
golden bugle. But it was not the grasshoppers or thrush to which he
listened breathlessly: it was the soft breathing of the young girl
beside him, as she sat attentive, a quiet delight in her face, her blue
eyes gathering soft lustre. Nature, when she and the world were young,
might have looked with such motherly tenderness on all her living
things. Her large nervous hands were clasped about her knees: the yellow
hair glistened close beside him, and as her full bosom rose and fell he
could hear her heart beat in the silence.

He stood up quickly with a shiver: "Shall we go to the house?"

She rose: "Yes, if you will. They are learning to know me now. I come
here every day. There is a partridge lives under that bush, and he came
out and actually let me see him drum once, and yesterday I found a
blacksnake attacking a bluebird's nest in time to help fight the
battle."

They had reached the hedge: Neckart held apart the thorny bushes, but
did not give her his hand to help her through, as he would have done to