summer.  In the open spaces on the slope, beyond the farthest shadow-reach of the manzanita, poised the mariposa lilies, like so many flights of jewelled moths suddenly arrested and on the verge of trembling into flight again.  Here and there that woods harlequin, the madrone, permitting itself to be caught in the act of changing its pea-green trunk to madder-red, breathed its fragrance into the air from great clusters of waxen bells.  Creamy white were these bells, shaped like lilies-of-the-valley, with the sweetness of perfume that is of the springtime.

There was not a sigh of wind.  The air was drowsy with its weight of perfume.  It was a sweetness that would have been cloying had the air been heavy and humid.  But the air was sharp and thin.  It was as starlight transmuted into atmosphere, shot through and warmed by sunshine, and flower-drenched with sweetness.

An occasional butterfly drifted in and out through the patches of light and shade.  And from all about rose the low and sleepy hum of mountain bees—­feasting Sybarites that jostled one another good-naturedly at the board, nor found time for rough discourtesy.  So quietly did the little stream drip and ripple its way through the canyon that it spoke only in faint and occasional gurgles.  The voice of the stream was as a drowsy whisper, ever interrupted by dozings and silences, ever lifted again in the awakenings.

The motion of all things was a drifting in the heart of the canyon.  Sunshine and butterflies drifted in and out among the trees.  The hum of the bees and the whisper of the stream were a drifting of sound.  And the drifting sound and drifting color seemed to weave together in the making of a delicate and intangible fabric which was the spirit of the place.  It was a spirit of peace that was not of death, but of smooth-pulsing life, of quietude that was not silence, of movement that was not action, of repose that was quick with existence without being violent with struggle and travail.  The spirit of the place was the spirit of the peace of the living, somnolent with the easement and content of prosperity, and undisturbed by rumors of far wars.

The red-coated, many-antlered buck acknowledged the lordship of the spirit of the place and dozed knee-deep in the cool, shaded pool.  There seemed no flies to vex him and he was languid with rest.  Sometimes his ears moved when the stream awoke and whispered; but they moved lazily, with, foreknowledge that it was merely the stream grown garrulous at discovery that it had slept.

But there came a time when the buck’s ears lifted and tensed with swift eagerness for sound.  His head was turned down the canyon.  His sensitive, quivering nostrils scented the air.  His eyes could not pierce the green screen through which the stream rippled away, but to his ears came the voice of a man.  It was a steady, monotonous, singsong voice.  Once the buck heard the harsh clash of metal upon rock.  At the sound he snorted with a sudden start that jerked him through the air from water to meadow, and his feet sank into the young velvet, while he pricked his ears and again scented the air.  Then he stole across the tiny meadow, pausing once and again to listen, and faded away out of the canyon like a wraith, soft-footed and without sound.