220 RIVERBY 



day or two later I sat on a hillside in the woods late 

 in the day, amid the pines and hemlocks, and heard 

 the soft, elusive spring call of the little owl a curi- 

 ous musical undertone hardly separable from the 

 silence ; a bell, muffled in feathers, tolling in the twi- 

 light of the woods and discernible only to the most 

 alert ear. But it was the voice of spring, the voice 

 of the same impulse that sent the woodcock winging 

 his way through the dusk, that was just beginning 

 to make the pussy-willows swell and the grass to 

 freshen in the spring runs. 



Occasionally, of a bright, warm, still day in 

 March, such as we have had the present season, the 

 little flying spider is abroad. It is the most delicate 

 of all March tokens, but very suggestive. Its long, 

 waving threads of gossamer, invisible except when 

 the sunlight falls upon them at a particular angle, 

 stream out here and there upon the air, a filament 

 of life, reaching and reaching as if to catch and 

 detain the most subtle of the skyey influences. 



Nature is always new in the spring, and lucky are 

 we if it finds us new also. 



