But the Douglas, with his denser body, leaps and glides in hidden strength, seemingly as independent of common muscles as a mountain stream.

He threads the tasseled branches of the pines, stirring their needles like a rustling breeze; now shooting across openings in arrowy lines; now launching in curves, glinting deftly from side to side in sudden zigzags, and swirling in giddy loops and spirals around the knotty trunks; getting into what seem to be the most impossible situations without sense of danger; now on his haunches, now on his head; yet ever graceful, and punctuating his most irrepressible outbursts of energy with little dots and dashes of perfect repose.

He is, without exception, the wildest animal I ever saw,--a fiery, sputtering little bolt of life, luxuriating in quick oxygen and the woods' best juices.

One can hardly think of such a creature being dependent, like the rest of us, on climate and food.

But, after all, it requires no long acquaintance to learn he is human, for he works for a living.