Over the Hills

His Return By Claude T. Barnes

In a cool, sequestered nook of a certain Wasatch valley reposes a willow-fringed pond, which in May is of unsurpassed loveliness. Unfrequented by man, its lily-floating waters, densely foliaged trees, and secluded banks, are a haven to many acquatic animals and birds as well as to several land species, who are attracted by its sweet retirement. To him who is melancholy no solace is so sympathetic and diverting as communion alone with nature some bird sings ever :

willingly and sweetly, some flower ever peeps its delightful head. No one knew the comfort of wood notes and embowered glens better than Frank Royce, for he had from early youth frequently sought the wilds. The World War was to him an experience full of arduous trials, strange sights, lonesomeness and thrills. True he enjoyed the luxuriant freshness of the Argonne woods, until one day he was wounded by a shell the warning hiss of which permitted him barely to escape with his life. Before his recovery the armistice was signed, and soon thereafter, though still weak, he was given passage for home. During the war he had worn a locket containing the portrait of an unmistakably beautiful girl; and he had a few times confided to his companions that Mary Rives was "the girl back home." Her letters, which had always been very sweet, with those of his mother, had been his chief delight and comfort. He had been back home not over an hour, however, before Fred Riley informed him that Mary was engaged to marry Maurice Hoover, a splendid young man with whom he had once been on intimate terms. Piqued beyond expression at the news, he had thereupon spent but a day with his mother; and, disgusted with life in general and girls in particular, had sought the quietude of this charming pond, his sole excuse to his mother being that he wanted a rest of a day or so after his long journey. As Frank erected his tent beside the spring that fed the pond, meadow larks filled the air with rapturous song; and from the distant fields issued the wild, irregular notes of several bobolinks; and then: "There came, Swift as a meteor's shining flame, A kingfisher from out the brake, And almost seemed to leave a wake Of brilliant hues behind."