Shot with gold and shadow, it laughed along, under a waving canopy of green, freckled with cool, clean pebbles and hiding roguishly now and then beneath a trailing branch.

A brook was a luxury.

It was mirror and spring and lullaby in one.
By six the tents of the nomad were pitched by the forest brook and the nomad herself was smoothing back her ruffled hair over a crystalline mirror.
A drowsy negro on a load of hay drove by on the road beyond.
Diane studied him with critical interest.
"Johnny," she said, "just why are there so many drowsy negroes about driving loads of hay?
Or is that the same one?
And if it is, where under Heaven has he been driving that hay for the last three days ?" Johnny didn't know.

Wherefore he pursed his lips and shook his head.
The hay wagon turned on into the forest on the farther side of the road and halted.

The drowsy negro leisurely alighted and shuffled through the trees until he stood before Diane with a square of birch bark in his hand.