The Song of the Wolf. Frank Mayer

deceptively black against the sun. A dun-colored heap of trash at the foot of a sagebrush in the bight of the dry creek-bed below resolves itself into a very live-looking coyote which blinks yearningly at the unattainable venison on the knoll above, wistfully licks his chops and slinks evilly in the wake of the grouse broods.

      As the sun dips behind the detached mountain spurs in the west the shadows grow slightly blue and the high lights intensify. By some optical necromancy the clouds seem massed in the west, the whole eastern sweep of sky being an unbroken wash of salmon pink, relieved by tinges of apple-green at its nethermost edges. Against this tender background the minutest details of the majestic Rockies stand out with such vivid distinctness that one gasps with the wonder of it. Long after the low lands have gloomed these heights glow with a glory indescribable, and when it has finally passed one feels as though a glimpse of Heaven itself had been vouchsafed to the soul torn with Life's torturing skepticism.

      But what words can describe, what brush portray the awful grandeur of the western sky! Before that riot of color the eye falls abashed as did those of Moses on the mount. The sublimity of it shrivels man's pitiful egoism until he grovels in humility and awe. When God lays His hand upon the sky the dimmest eye sees and the most skeptical heart believes!

      She was saying as much in substance to him as they rode homeward in the soft afterglow, her face transfigured by the reverence in her heart. He assented gravely, his eyes dwelling admiringly upon her rare beauty. In the hallowing light of the hour she was invested with a new charm to this appreciative Pantheist and from some pigeon-hole of his well-stocked and retentive memory called the almost-inspired voice of old Ossian: