SPRING DAWN 



you had but to breathe deep to get the 

 soft assurance of the near presence of 

 spring, and if you walked briskly for a 

 moment the north wind's lances fell clat- 

 tering to the icy ground and you moved 

 in a new atmosphere of warmth and geni- 

 ality. Thus point to point are the picket 

 lines of the contending forces. 



In the west the pale, cold moon, now a 

 few days past the full, was sinking in a 

 blue-black sky that might have been that 

 of the keenest night in December. In tire 

 east, out of a low bank of dark clouds 

 that marked the dun spring mists rising 

 from the sea twenty miles away, flashed 

 iris tints of dawn upward into a clear, 

 pale sky that bore dapplings of softest 

 apple-green. On the one hand were night 

 and the winter, on the other dawn and 

 the spring, and down the pine-sheltered 

 path I walked between the two to a point 



