WITH CARL OF THE HILL 27 



the bourne of the spangled stars, where children play 

 in the gardens of the morning that never grows to 

 noon or night. 



Such is the power of love. 



The Story of Little Sunlight. 



Carl, as I said before, is by profession a timber 

 merchant, or more correctly a lumberer. He also 

 does a trade in furs. There is no more practised 

 hunter and trapper in all the district round than 

 he, no man more versed in all the detail of 

 device for taking wild things, from the horsehair 

 noose at the end of a bender to the heavy log which, 

 propped up across a forest track, is known as the 

 dead-fall trap. But this form of trap he does not like, 

 and has not set at all during the last few years. 



To say that Carl is a naturalist is to speak but half 

 the truth. Say rather that he is a very priest of 

 nature. It is not only that he knows the names and 

 life-history of every flower and bird about him — oh 

 yes, he knows that ; they are his friends and his com- 

 panions, and as such he loves them — but it is more. 

 It is as though Nature, the Great Mother, has com- 

 missioned him her own. No breath that comes from 

 the gates of the morning but brings to him its 



