It takes only a single frog to make the spring-time.
That week the trailing fragrance of arbutus hung over wet hollows along the hills; and at night, high in the starlight, the thrilling clangour of wild geese rang out--the truest sky-music of the North among all the magic folk-songs of the wild.
The anchor-ice let go and went out early, and a few pioneer trout jumped that week; the cock-grouse, magnificent in his exquisite puffed ruff, paced the black-wet drumming log, and the hollow woodlands throbbed all day with his fairy drumming.
On hard-wood ridges every sugar-bush ran sap; the aroma from fire and kettle sweetened the air; a few battered, hibernating butterflies crawled out of cracks and crannies and sat on the sap-pans sunning their scarlet-banded wings.
And out of the hot South into the fading silver of this chill Northern forest-world came Hamil, sunburned, sombre-eyed, silent.
Malcourt met him at Pride's Fall with a buckboard and a pair of half-broken little Morgans; and away they tore into the woods, scrambling uphill, plunging downhill, running away most of the time to the secret satisfaction of Malcourt, who cared particularly for what was unsafe in life.
He looked sideways at Hamil once or twice, and, a trifle disappointed that the pace seemed to suit him, let the little horses out.
"Bad thing to meet a logging team," he observed.
"Yes," said Hamil absently.

So Malcourt let the horses run away when they cared to; they needed it and he enjoyed it.

Besides there were never any logging teams on that road.
Malcourt inquired politely concerning the Villa Cardross and its occupants; Hamil answered in generalities.
"You've finished there, then!" "Practically.

I may go down in the autumn to look it over once more." "Is Cardross going to put in the Schwarzwald pigs ?" "Yes; they're ordered." "Portlaw wants some here.

I'd give ten dollars, poor as I am, if I could get Portlaw out in the snow and fully occupied with an irritated boar." "Under such circumstances one goes up a tree ?" inquired Hamil, smiling.
"One does if one is not too fat and can shed snowshoes fast enough.
Otherwise one keeps on shooting one's 45-70.