Deeper in the forest pink moccasin-flowers bloomed among rocks, and the air was tinctured with a honeyed smell from the spiked orchis cradled in its sheltering leaf under the hemlock shade.

Once, as I crossed a marshy place, about me floated a violet perfume, and I was at a loss to find its source until I espied a single purple blossom of the Arethusa bedded in sturdy thickets of rose-azalea, faintly spicy, and all humming with the wings of plundering bees.

Underfoot my shoes brushed through spikenard, and fell silently on carpets of moss-pinks, and once I saw a matted bed of late Mayflower, and the forest dusk grew sweeter and sweeter, saturating all the woodland, until each breath I drew seemed to intoxicate.

Spring languor was in earth and sky, and in my bones, too; yet, through this Northern forest ever and anon came faint reminders of receding snows, melting beyond the Canadas—­delicate zephyrs, tinctured with the far scent of frost, flavoring the sun’s balm at moments with a sharper essence.

Now traversing a ferny space edged in with sweetbrier, a breeze accompanied me, caressing neck and hair, stirring a sudden warmth upon my cheek like a breathless maid close beside me, whispering.

Then through the rustle of leafy depths I heard the stream’s laughter, very far away, and I turned to the left across the moss, walking more swiftly till I came to the log-bridge where the road crosses.  Below me leaped the stream, deep in its ravine of slate, roaring over the dam above the rocky gorge only to flow out again between the ledge and the stone foundations of the grist-mill opposite.  Down into the ravine and under the dam I climbed, using the mossy steps that nature had cut in the slate, and found a rock to sit on where the spray from the dam could not drench me.  And here I baited my hook and cast out, so that the swirling water might carry my lure under the mill’s foundations, where Ruyven said big, dusky trout most often lurked.

But I am no fisherman, and it gives me no pleasure to drag a finny creature from its element and see its poor mouth gasp and its eyes glaze and the fiery dots on its quivering sides grow dimmer.  So when a sly trout snatched off my bait I was in no mood to cover my hook again, but set the rod on the rocks and let the bright current waft my line as it would, harmless now as the dusty alder leaves dimpling yonder ripple.  So I opened my book, idly attentive, reading The Poems of Pansard, while dappled shadows of clustered maple leaves moved on the page, and droning bees set old Pansard’s lines to music.

     “Like two sweet skylarks springing skyward, singing,
       Piercing the empyrean of blinding light,
     So shall our souls take flight, serenely winging,
       Soaring on azure heights to God’s delight;
     While from below through sombre deeps come stealing
     The floating notes of earthward church-bells pealing.”