12
The Heart of Monadnock
II
But "If winter comes shall spring be far behind?" Up there in the north, on those frozen crags and ridges the magic chemistry of nature is at work, "thawing snow flakes into flowers," while in the southern home of the Mountain-Lover the crocuses and tulips and the pansies break like flame. April. May. Then the time for the mountain comes at last. Out of the heat of southern June its lover returns to his own.
Breathless he drinks in again the air of crystal limpidness; breathless he gazes with rapture at the unchanged cliffs awaiting him, lifting their serene fronts clad in purplish-gray from the surrounding sea of gay spring green. With bared head he stands in
