24 



TOfiere Ifie Trail 

 ^~Beg//?s 



over all the harmony of the world brooded a 

 silence too great to be disturbed. Sunlight 

 and shadow, snow and ice, gloomy ravines and 

 dazzling mountain tops, mayflowers and sing- 

 ing birds and rustling winds filled all the earth 

 with color and movement and melody. From 

 under their very feet great masses of rock, 

 tossed and tumbled as by a giant's play, 

 stretched downwards to where the green 

 woods began and rolled in vast billows to 

 the harbor, which shone and sparkled in the 

 sun, yet seemed no bigger than their mother's 

 paw. Fishing-boats with shining sails hov- 

 ered over it, like dragon-flies, going and 

 coming from the little houses that sheltered 

 together under the opposite mountain, like a 

 cluster of gray toadstools by a towering pine 

 stump. Most wonderful, most interesting of 

 all was the little gray hut on the shore, almost 

 under their feet, where little Noel and the 

 Indian children played with the tide like fid- 

 dler crabs, or pushed bravely out to meet the 

 fishermen in a bobbing nutshell. For wolf 

 cubs are like collies in this, that they seem 

 to have a natural interest, perhaps a natural 



