Across the
pale silver sun of April their shadows flickered, and with them
flickered the tracery of new leaves and the delicacy of the lace-
like upper branches.
Orde walked slowly farther and farther into the forest, lost in an
enjoyment which he could not have defined accurately, but which was
so integral a portion of his nature that it had drawn him from the
banks and wholesale groceries to the woods. After a while he sat
down on a log and lit his pipe. Ahead the ground sloped upward.
Dimly through the half-fronds of the early season he could make out
the yellow of sands and the deep complementary blue of the sky above
them. He knew the Lake to lie just beyond. With the thought he
arose. A few moments later he stood on top the hill, gazing out
over the blue waters.
Very blue they were, with a contrasting snowy white fringe of waves
breaking gently as far up the coast as the eye could reach. The
beach, on these tideless waters, was hard and smooth only in the
narrow strip over which ran the wash of the low surf. All the rest
of the expanse of sand back to the cliff-like hills lay dry and
tumbled into hummocks and drifts, from which projected here a sawlog
cast inland from a raft by some long-past storm, there a slab, again
a ship's rib sticking gaunt and defiant from the shifting, restless
medium that would smother it.
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