Page:Wisdom of the Wilderness (1923).pdf/106

 every tree top was elusively vocal with the thin-drawn, single notes of the migrating cedar waxwings—notes which were mere tiny beads of sound. The ice which formed each night along the edges of the shallow pools floated away each morning before the unclouded sun was two hours high. And the air, stirred with light breezes, sparkling and rich with earth scents, was like wine in the veins of every creature alive. One night came a light sifting of snow, in gossamer flakes which vanished at the first touch of the sun. Then the breezes died away; the air, losing its crisp tang, grew balmy and languorous; the sharp blue of the sky veiled itself in a tender, opaline haze; the wilderness seemed to fall asleep, its silence broken only by the whispers of the falling leaves—and, once in a while, the startling chirr-rr-rr of a red squirrel. Life, for the moment, had taken on the tissue of a dream. It was the magic Indian Summer.

It passed, as it had come, in a night. Day broke steel-gray and menacing, with a bitter wind cutting down out of the North; and in a few hours everything was rigid with frost. Quills, though the cold in reahty had small terror for his hardy and warm-clad frame, had been disturbed and annoyed by the sudden change. It occurred to him that a warm and sheltered re-