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In the mass of white globes and colored lanterns of paper the eye was deceived as to distances. The allies stretched away interminably, the pines seemed enormous, and the green hillsides mountainous. Nor were charming single effects wanting.

Whether they believed us, or, believing, thought us very foolish, is best known to themselves; but I suspect the latter, by their compliments on our cleverness, on our return. At Jougne we supplied ourselves with provisions, and then proceeded through valleys, each narrower than the last, more dismal with pines, and more chequered with snow.

Two pines near the door, solitary pickets of the serried ranks of distant forest, cast long shadows like paths to the cottage, and sighed their spiced breath in the windows. For there was no frivolity of vine or flower round Salomy Jane's bower. The clearing was too recent, the life too practical for vanities like these.

"See in what wanton harmless folds It everywhere the meadow holds: Where all things gaze themselves, and doubt If they be in it or without; And for this shade, which therein shines Narcissus-like, the sun too pines.

"Pete knew a world unseen by us, and we, therefore, fancied ourselves wiser than he. The wind in the pines, the rustle of the leaves, the murmur of the brook, the growl of the thunder, and the voices of the night were all understood and answered by him.

He had thrown off the covering in his sleep so that his naked rosy little legs were visible, and a warm, strong and wonderfully fresh smell ascended from the child's clean healthy body and mingled with the powerful odour of the pines, that the night sent into the room through the slightly open window.

Down below lay the little town which would be forever memorable to them; while above them rose the grand chain of snowy mountains which still seemed as lofty and unapproachable as ever, though they themselves were on high ground. Soft and velvety and green lay that great upward sweep in the sunshine, shaded in some places by a dark patch of pines, or gleaming with a heap of fallen snow.

"I say, let me catch the next." "Either of you may if you can," he replied; and we waited again for some time. "Try some fresh place," whispered Mercer. "Nay; they all run one into another; the ground under here's like the rat-holes up at the old house. There goes one." For a rabbit bolted from a hole higher up, turned on seeing us, and darted up toward the pines.

He speaks like one sick of the calamitous times and abject people among whom his lot is cast. He pines for the strength and glory of ancient Rome, for the fasces of Brutus, and the sword of Scipio, the gravity of the curule chair, and the bloody pomp of the triumphal sacrifice.

On the east slopes of the middle Sierras the pines, all but an occasional yellow variety, desert the stream borders about the level of the lowest lakes, and the birches and tree-willows begin. The firs hold on almost to the mesa levels, there are no foothills on this eastern slope, and whoever has firs misses nothing else.