There were the fragrant essences of the laurel and spruce--baked in the long-day sunshine that had encompassed their recesses--still coming warm to his face; there were the strange shiftings of temperature throughout the openings, that alternately warmed and chilled him as he walked.

It seemed so odd that he should now have to seek her instead of her coming to him; it would never be the same meeting to him, away from the house that he had built for her! He strolled back, and looked down upon it, nestling on the ledge.

The white moonlight that lay upon it dulled the glitter of lights in its windows, but the sounds of laughter and singing came to even his unfastidious ears with a sense of vague discord.

He walked back again, and began to pace before the thick-set wood.

Suddenly he stopped and listened.
To any other ears but those accustomed to mountain solitude it would have seemed nothing.