was giving way to a dull, lustreless brown. Gradually, day by day,
as though they were a pestilence, they expanded, augmented until they,
and not the white, became the dominant tone. The sun was high in the sky
now. At noontime the man's shadow was short, scarcely extended back of
his pony's feet. Mid-afternoons, in the low places when he passed
through, there was a spattering of snow water collected in tiny puddles.
After that there was no need of signs. Realities were everywhere. Dips
in the rolling land, mere dry runs save at this season, became creeks;
flushed to their capacity and beyond, sang softly all the day long. Not
only the high spots, but even the north slopes lost their white
blankets, surrendered to the conquering brown. Migratory life, long
absent, returned to its own. Prairie kites soared far overhead on
motionless wings. Meadow larks, cheeriest of heralds, practised their
five-toned lay. Here and there, to the north of prairie boulders,
appeared tufts of green; tufts that, like the preceding brown, grew and
grew and grew until they dominated the whole landscape. Then at last,
the climax, the _finale_ of the play, came life, animal and vegetable,
with a rush. Again at daylight and at dusk swarms of black dots on
whistling wings floated here and there, descended to earth; and,
following, indefinite as to location, weird, lonely, boomed forth in
their mating songs. Transient, shallow, miniature lakes swarmed with
their new-come denizens. Last of all, final assurance of a new season's
advent, by day and by night, swelling, diminishing, unfailingly musical
as distant chiming bells, came the sound of all most typical of prairie
and of spring. From high overhead in the blue it came, often so high
that the eye could not distinguish its makers; yet alway distinctive,
alway hauntingly mysterious. "Honk! honk! honk!" sounded and echoed and
re-echoed that heraldry over the awakened land. "Honk! honk! honk!" it
repeated; and listening humans smiled and commented unnecessarily each
to the other: "Spring is not coming. It is here."

CHAPTER XV

THE FRUIT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE

A shaggy grey wolf, a baby no longer but practically full grown, swung
slowly along the beaten trail connecting the house and the barn as the
stranger appeared. He did not run, he did not glance behind, he made no
sound. With almost human dignity he vacated the premises to the
newcomer. Not until he reached his destination, the il