l!" cried Gloria. "See, I remembered his name. And he is
here to welcome us."

Under the pines, where the ground was dry, King made their camp-fire, a
small blaze of dry twigs between two flat stones. Gloria was every bit
as exultantly delighted with the moment as she could have been were she
really "about ten years old."

"I want to help. What can I do? Tell me, Mark, what can I do? Oh, the
coffee; you can't make coffee without water, can you?" She caught up the
new tin coffee-pot and ran across the meadow to the creek. The little
bird had given over singing and watched her; when she was mindful of his
previous rights and did not come too near his waterfall, he gave over
any foolish notion he may have had of flight and cocked his eye again at
the pool. Perhaps the coffee-pot put him in mind of his own dinner.
Gloria, kneeling at her task, watched him. He seemed to reflect a
moment; then with a sudden flirt and flutter he had broken the surface
of the water and was gone out of sight. She gasped; he had gone right
under the waterfall, a little bundle of feathers no bigger than her
clenched hand. She knelt with one knee getting wet and never knowing it;
she began to feel positive that the hardy, headlong little fellow surely
must be battered to death and drowned. Then with the abruptness of a
flash of light there he was again, on the surface now, driving himself
forward toward the bank. And there he sat again on his rock, the water
flung from him to flash and mingle with the falling spray, his head
back, his throbbing little throat pouring out his fluent melody. Gloria
laughed happily and went back to King and the fire with her pot of
water.

* * * * *

"I love this!" said Gloria softly.

She was drinking a tin cup of strong cheap coffee cooled with condensed
milk; in her other hand was a thick man-made sandwich of bread, butter,
and corned beef. King laughed.

"What?" he demanded. "What particular article of my daintily served
luncheon has made the great hit with you? Is it, perhaps, the rancid
butter that you adore?"

"You know. I love this." Her look embraced the universe--began with the
dying fire, swept on beyond the tree-tops against the deep blue of sky.
"I don't know why people live in cities, with all of this shut out."

"The call of the wild!" He spoke lightly and yet he glimpsed a soul
really stirred; saw that for the moment, if for no longer, the great
solitudes held he