hills, planted raggedly with wind-twisted and stunted trees. But
between the brick buildings and these sand-hills flowed the river--
wide, deep, and still--bordered by the steamboat landings on the
town side and by fishermen's huts and net-racks and small boats on
the other. Orde seated himself on the smooth, clean sand and
removed his hat. He saw these things, and in imagination the far
upper stretches of the river, with the mills and yards and booms
extending for miles; and still above them the marshes and the
flats where the river widened below the Big Bend. That would be the
location for the booms of the new company--a cheap property on which
the partners had already secured a valuation. And below he dropped
in imagination with the slackening current until between two greater
sand-hills than the rest the river ran out through the channel made
by two long piers to the lake--blue, restless, immeasurable. To
right and left stretched the long Michigan coast, with its low
yellow hills topped with the green of twisted pines, firs, and
beeches, with always its beach of sand, deep and dry to the very
edge of its tideless sea, strewn with sawlogs, bark, and the ancient
remains of ships.

After he had cooled he arose and made his way back to a pleasant
hardwood forest of maple and beech. Here the leaves were just
bursting from their buds. Underfoot the early spring flowers--the
hepaticas, the anemones, the trilium, the dog-tooth violets, the
quaint, early, bright-green undergrowths--were just reaching their
perfection. Migration was in full tide. Birds, little and big,
flashed into view and out again, busy in the mystery of their
northward pilgrimage, giving the appearance of secret and silent
furtiveness, yet each uttering his characteristic call from time to
time, as though for a signal to others of the host. The woods were