Though winter still lingered, puffs of warm air laden with the scent of the birch-trees, already adorned with their rosy efflorescence, and of the larches, whose silken tassels were beginning to appear,--breezes tempered by the incense and the sighs of earth,--gave token of the glorious Northern spring, the rapid, fleeting joy of that most melancholy of Natures.
The wind was beginning to lift the veil of mist which half-obscured the gulf.

The birds sang.

The bark of the trees where the sun had not yet dried the clinging hoar-frost shone gayly to the eye in its fantastic wreathings which trickled away in murmuring rivulets as the warmth reached them.

The three friends walked in silence along the shore.
Wilfrid and Minna alone noticed the magic transformation that was taking place in the monotonous picture of the winter landscape.

Their companion walked in thought, as though a voice were sounding to her ears in this concert of Nature.
Presently they reached the ledge of rocks through which the Sieg had forced its way, after escaping from the long avenue cut by its waters in an undulating line through the forest,--a fluvial pathway flanked by aged firs and roofed with strong-ribbed arches like those of a cathedral.