From the gate, he saw what once had been a path leading down
the bank to a spring, where the tiny streamlet that crossed the road a
hundred yards away, on its course to Clear Creek, began. Pushing open the
gate that sagged dejectedly from its leaning post, the artist went down
the path, and found himself in a charming nook--shut in on every side by
the forest vegetation that, watered by the spring, grew rank and dense.
For a space on the gate side of the spring, the sod was firm and
smooth--with a gray granite boulder in the center of the little glade,
and, here and there, wild rose-bushes and the slender, gray trunks of
alder trees breaking through. From the higher branches of the alders that
shut out the sky with their dainty, silvery-green leaves, hung--with many
a graceful loop and knot--ropes of wild grape-vine and curtains of
virgin's-bower. Along the bank below the old fence, the wild blackberries
disputed possession with the roses; while the little stream was mottled
with the tender green of watercress and bordered with moss and fragrant
mint. Above the arroyo willows, on the farther side of the glade, Oak
Knoll, with bits of the pine-clad Galenas, could be glimpsed; but on the
orchard side, the vine-dressed bank with the old gate under the mistletoe
oak shut out the view.
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