To
right and left stretched the long Michigan coast, with its low
yellow hills topped with the green of twisted pines, firs, and
beeches, with always its beach of sand, deep and dry to the very
edge of its tideless sea, strewn with sawlogs, bark, and the ancient
remains of ships.
After he had cooled he arose and made his way back to a pleasant
hardwood forest of maple and beech. Here the leaves were just
bursting from their buds. Underfoot the early spring flowers--the
hepaticas, the anemones, the trilium, the dog-tooth violets, the
quaint, early, bright-green undergrowths--were just reaching their
perfection. Migration was in full tide. Birds, little and big,
flashed into view and out again, busy in the mystery of their
northward pilgrimage, giving the appearance of secret and silent
furtiveness, yet each uttering his characteristic call from time to
time, as though for a signal to others of the host. The woods were
swarming as city streets, yet to Orde these little creatures were as
though invisible. He stood in the middle of a great multitude, he
felt himself under the observation of many bright eyes, he heard the
murmuring and twittering that proclaimed a throng, he sensed an
onward movement that flowed slowly but steadily toward the pole;
nevertheless, a flash of wings, a fluttering little body, the dip of
a hasty short flight, represented the visible tokens.
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