I am up here in the
mountains--when the canyon gates are shut and the world is left outside."
Even as she spoke, her mood changed and the last words were uttered
wistfully, as a captive spirit--that, by nature wild and free, was
permitted, for a brief time only, to go beyond its prison walls--might
have spoken.

The artist--puzzled by her flash-like change of moods, and by her manner
as she spoke of the world beyond the canyon gates--had no words to reply.
As he stood there,--in that little glade where the light fell as in a
quiet cathedral and the air trembled with the deep organ-tones of the
distant waters--holding in his hands the basket of leaves and ferns with
its wild fruit, and looking at the beautiful girl who had brought her
offering with the naturalness of a child of the mountains and the air of a
woodland spirit,--he again felt that the world he had always known was
very far away.

The girl, too, was silent--as though, by some subtle power, she knew his
thoughts and did not wish to interrupt.

So still were they, that a wild bird--darting through the screen of alder
boughs--stopped to swing on a limb above their heads, with a burst of
wild-wood melody. In the arroyo beyond the willow wall, a quail called his
evening call, and was answered by his mate from the top of the bank under
the mistletoe oak. A pair of gray squirrels crept down the gray trunks of
the trees and slipped around the granite boulder to drink at the spring;
then scampered away again--half in frolic, half in fright--as they caught
sight of the man and the maid. As the squirrels disappeared, the girl
laughed--a low laugh of fellowship with the creatures of the
wilderness--in complete understanding of their humor. Then--as though
following the path of a sunbeam--two gorgeously brown and yellow winged
butterflies came flitting through the draperies of virgin's-bower, and
floated in zigzag flight about the glade--now high among the alder boughs;
now low over the tops of the roses and berry-bushes; down to the fragrant
mint at the water's edge; and up again to the tops of the willows, as if
to leave the glade; but only to return again to the vines that covered the
bank, and to the flowers that, here and there, starred the grassy sward.

"Oh!"--cried the girl impulsively, as the beautiful winged creatures
disappeared at last,--"if people could only be like that! It's so hard to
be yourself in the world. Everybody, there, seems trying to be some