der of life was a something strong
and tangible like bread and wine.

The wine of it rushed in particular to Farallone's head; his brain
became flooded with it; his feet cavorted upon the moss; his bellowed
singing awoke the echoes, and the whole heavenly choir of the birds
answered him.

"You, Nicodemus," he cried gayly, "thought that man was given a nose to
be a tripod for his eye-glasses--but now--oh, smell--smell!"

His great bulk under its mighty pack tripped lightly, dancingly at the
bride's elbow. Now his agile fingers nipped some tiny, scarce
perceivable flower to delight her eye, and now his great hand scooped up
whole sheaves of strong-growing columbine, and flung them where her feet
must tread. He made her see great beauties and minute, and whatever had
a look of smelling sweet he crushed in his hands for her to smell.

He was no longer that limb of Satan, that sardonic bully of the desert
days, but a gay wood-god intent upon the gentle ways of wooing. At first
the bride turned away her senses from his offerings to eye and nostril;
for a time she made shift to turn aside from the flowers that he cast
for her feet to tread. But after a time, like one in a trance, she began
to yield up her indifference and aloofness. The magic of the riotous
spring began to intoxicate her. I saw her turn to the sailor and smile
a gracious smile. And after awhile she began to talk with him.

We came at length to a bright stream, from whose guileless
superabundance Farallone, with a bent pin and a speck of red cloth,
jerked a string of gaudy rainbow-trout. He made a fire and began to
broil them; the bride searched the vicinal woods for dried branches to
feed the fire. The groom knelt by the brook and washed the dust from his
face and ears, snuffing the cool water into his dusty nose and blowing
it out.

And I lay in the shade and wondered by what courses the brook found its
way to what sea or lake; whether it touched in its wanderings only the
virginal wilderness, or flowed at length among the habitations of men.

Farallone, of a sudden, jerked up his head from the broiling and
answered my unspoken questions.

"A man," he said, "who followed this brook could come in a few days to
the river Maria Cleofas, and following that, to the town of that name,
in a matter of ten days more. I tell you," he went on, "because some day
some of you may be going that voyage; no ill-found voyage
either--spring-water and trout all the way