ouds, there had broken
forth again in the trees brief trills and calls and fluting of bird
notes. The sward and ferns glittered fresh green under the raindrops;
the young leaves on trees and hedge seemed visibly to uncurl, the
uncovered earth looked richly dark and moist, and sent forth the
fragrance from its deeps, which, rising to a man's nostrils, stirs and
thrills him because it is the scent of life's self. The bird upon the
sapling was a robin, the tiny round body perched upon his delicate legs,
plump and bright plumaged for mating. He touched his warm red breast
with his beak, fluffed out and shook his feathers, and, swelling his
throat, poured forth his small, entranced song. It was a gay, brief,
jaunty thing, but pure, joyous, gallant, liquid melody. There was dainty
bravado in it, saucy demand and allurement. It was addressed to some
invisible hearer of the tender sex, and wheresoever she might be
hidden--whether in great branch or low thicket or hedge--there was
hinted no doubt in her small wooer's note that she would hear it and
in due time respond. Mount Dunstan, listening, even laughed at its
confident music. The tiny thing uttering its Call of the World--jubilant
in the surety of answer!

Having flung it forth, he paused a moment and waited, his small
head turned sideways, his big, round, dew-bright black eye roguishly
attentive. Then with more swelling of the throat he trilled and rippled
gayly anew, undisturbed and undoubting, but with a trifle of insistence.
Then he listened, tried again two or three times, with brave chirps
and exultant little roulades. "Here am I, the bright-breasted, the
liquid-eyed, the slender-legged, the joyous and conquering! Listen to
me--listen to me. Listen and answer in the call of God's world." It was
the joy and triumphant faith in the tiny note of the tiny thing--Life
as he himself was, though Life whose mystery his man's hand could have
crushed--which, while he laughed, set Mount Dunstan thinking. Spring
warmth and spring scents and spring notes set a man's being in tune with
infinite things.

The bright roulade began again, prolonged itself with renewed effort,
rose to its height, and ended. From a bush in the thicket farther up the
road a liquid answer came. And Mount Dunstan's laugh at the sound of it
was echoed by another which came apparently from the bank rising from
the road on the other side of the hedge, and accompanying the laugh was
a good-natured nasal voice