Here and there the fierce sun, from whose
active persecution we had just escaped, searched for us through the
woods, but its keen blade was dulled and turned aside by
intercostal boughs, and its brightness dissipated in nebulous mists
throughout the roofing of the dim, brown aisles around us. We were
in another atmosphere, under another sky; indeed, in another world
than the dazzling one we had just quitted. The grave silence
seemed so much a part of the grateful coolness, that we hesitated
to speak, and for some moments lay quietly outstretched on the pine
tassels where we had first thrown ourselves. Finally, a voice
broke the silence:--
"Ask the old Major; he knows all about it!"
The person here alluded to under that military title was myself. I
hardly need explain to any Californian that it by no means followed
that I was a "Major," or that I was "old," or that I knew anything
about "it," or indeed what "it" referred to. The whole remark was
merely one of the usual conventional feelers to conversation,--a
kind of social preamble, quite common to our slangy camp
intercourse.
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