Two-thirds of the way across a little puff of wind sparkled its way out from the shore to meet me. It brought with it, full and rich, the fragrance which had led me so long; and as I looked at the broad leaves overhanging my rock port, their under sides and the young shoots covered with a soft, cottony down, I laughed to think that I should not have known what it was I sought. For it was there in plain sight; indeed the rock was canopied with it. A long time I sat on that rock on the farther side of the cove, the June sun warming me, the fragrance of the fox-grape blooms over my head alluring, soothing, wrapping my senses in a dreamy delight. He who would attempt to classify and define the perfume that drifts through the pasture from the bloom of the fox-grape may. I only know that it makes me dream of pipes of Pan playing in the morning of the world, while all the wonder creatures of the old Greek myths dance in rhythm and sing in soft undertones, and the riot of young life bubbles within them. The pasture, indeed, could ill afford to lose the pious incense from the sweet-fern’s censer, the fragrance of the altar candles of the bayberry, and the subtle essence of the sweet-gale. These are the holy incense of the church of out-of-doors, and it is well that we should always find them when we come to worship; yet he who would dare all to steal for one elusive moment the fragrance of the deep heart of delight, let him come to the pasture on just that rare, brief period of all the year when the fox-grape sends forth its perfume. THE FROG RENDEZVOUS THE FROG RENDEZVOUS The pasture meets the pond all along for a mile or so. It lays its lip to it and drinks only here and there. It drinks deepest of all in a cove. You will hardly know where pasture leaves off and cove begins, the two mingle so gently. The pasture creatures here slip down into the cove, and those of the pond make their way well up into the pasture. You yourself, approaching the cove from the pasture side on foot, will be splashing ankle deep in it before you know you are coming to it at all, so well do the pasture bushes, standing to their knees in the cool water, screen it from you. Coming from the pond side you might think you saw the margin in this same screen of bushes, but there are roods of cove beyond and behind them. The shrubs of the pasture love to come down and dabble their feet in the warm pond water and sun themselves in the sheltered, fragrant air.