Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/233

, and sword. Believing him to be a cavalry officer, we have named him General Forrest.

And, Nell, through a vista of trees may be seen emerging from the opposite wood a lady of most aristocratic bearing, wearing a picture hat with sweeping plumes of black, and a long black cloak bordered with silvery gray fur. As she stands in a twilighty place, she is known as Our Lady of the Gloaming.

I shall not expect you to believe the half of this, unless you yourself have somewhere seen the strange carvings and colorings of the fire artist.

This art gallery of Nature’s is half screened from our path by naked branches of young oaks, through which a rain of gray moss is falling, giving an agreeable touch of desolation to our surroundings. For your sake I am willing to admit that forest statuary seen through so ghostly a drop-curtain may, from its vagueness, possibly receive an extra dash of glamour.

The farther up the canyon we go the denser and darker grow the woods. In that time of rain and mist it was often almost like night there, and still as death, unless the dogs got on track of some wild thing and set the echoes flying. In that case the yelping and yowling of Shady, the hound, must have made even the wood-nymphs strike for tall timber.

Sometimes through a small clearing we catch a glimpse of “high Cromla’s head piercing dark clouds, with squally winds in their skirts,” and see gray mists