opens
at once to your gaze. Then, as the weather waxes genial, the blossoms
shoot up from their hirsute guardianship, and nod brightly in the
breeze. It is the "spring beauty,"--as the frontier folk call it,--the
first vegetation of the season, presenting the phenomenon of rich
blooming flowers, while yet the lifeless turf shows no signs of
vitality. But life is there; for at once, as if by magic, the whole
expanse is green with verdure, growing with marvellous rapidity,
decked with flowers.

"Garden without path or fence,
Rolling up its billowy blooms."

Then you rise some soft morning, and the air is vocal with the cooing
of myriad birds. If you are just from the east, you will think that
thousands of turtle doves are announcing that spring has come. They
seem close about you; but you cannot see them. They are not in the
groves near by; you follow the sounds through the waving prairie grass
for a long distance, and you find them not, and will be surprised when
your western friend tells you that these are the voices of the prairie
hens, miles away, holding their annual convention, the queer cuckooing
not being loving sounds, but notes of war--abortive attempts at
crowing, which the rival males set up as they prepare to do battle
with each other.

And now from the blue expanse overhead come down the varied cries of
the migratory birds returning from the south. Line upon line of wild
geese, in military order, follow their leader, while the trumpet
blasts of the sand-hill cranes--the ostrich of the American
prairie--ring out clear and shrill, and their long white bills glisten
in the sunlight from afar, like bristling bayonets of ivory.

Tom stood in front of the hotel, enjoying the spring sights and sounds
with unusual zest. The two winters now past had been eventful to him.
Mr. Payson, the missionary, who had taken a great interest in Tom,
had, the winter before, kept school in his own cabin; and Tom and his
sister Eliza had attended much of the time, their tuition being paid
by such assistance as Tom might be able to render Mr. Payson in his
outdoor work.

Eliza had grown to be a sedate and interesting young woman, and was
making good headway with her studies, when one day she gave notice
that she should not be able to attend school any longer; and to her
teacher's inquiries she returned only blushes in reply, and he could
get no further light until the next day, when an ent