The girl, too, was silent--as though, by some subtle power, she knew his
thoughts and did not wish to interrupt.
So still were they, that a wild bird--darting through the screen of alder
boughs--stopped to swing on a limb above their heads, with a burst of
wild-wood melody. In the arroyo beyond the willow wall, a quail called his
evening call, and was answered by his mate from the top of the bank under
the mistletoe oak. A pair of gray squirrels crept down the gray trunks of
the trees and slipped around the granite boulder to drink at the spring;
then scampered away again--half in frolic, half in fright--as they caught
sight of the man and the maid. As the squirrels disappeared, the girl
laughed--a low laugh of fellowship with the creatures of the
wilderness--in complete understanding of their humor. Then--as though
following the path of a sunbeam--two gorgeously brown and yellow winged
butterflies came flitting through the draperies of virgin's-bower, and
floated in zigzag flight about the glade--now high among the alder boughs;
now low over the tops of the roses and berry-bushes; down to the fragrant
mint at the water's edge; and up again to the tops of the willows, as if
to leave the glade; but only to return again to the vines that covered the
bank, and to the flowers that, here and there, starred the grassy sward.
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