DIANE OF THE GREEN VAN

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I Of a Great White Bird Upon a Lake
II An Indoor Tempest
III A Whim
IV The Voice of the Open Country
V The Phantom that Rose from the Bottle
VI Baron Tregar
VII Themar
VIII After Sunset
IX In a Storm-Haunted Wood
X On the Ridge Road
XI In the Camp of the Gypsy Lady
XII A Bullet in Arcadia
XIII A Woodland Guest
XIV By the Backwater Pool
XV Jokai of Vienna
XVI The Young Man of the Sea
XVII In Which the Baron Pays
XVIII Nomads
XIX A Nomadic Minstrel
XX The Romance of Minstrelsy
XXI At the Gray of Dawn
XXII Sylvan Suitors
XXIII Letters
XXIV The Lonely Camper
XXV A December Snowstorm
XXVI An Accounting
XXVII The Song of the Pine-Wood Sparrow
XXVIII The Nomad of the Fire-Wheel
XXIX The Black Palmer
XXX The Unmasking
XXXI The Reckoning
XXXII Forest Friends
XXXIII By the Winding Creek
XXXIV The Moon Above the Marsh
XXXV The Wind of the Okeechobee
XXXVI Under the Live Oaks
XXXVII In the Glades
XXXVIII In Philip's Wigwam
XXXIX Under the Wild March Moon
XL The Victory
XLI In Mic-co's Lodge
XLII The Rain Upon the Wigwam
XLIII The Rival Campers
XLIV The Tale of a Candlestick
XLV The Gypsy Blood
XLVI In the Forest
XLVII "The Marshes of Glynn"
XLVIII On the Lake Shore
XLIX Mr. Dorrigan
L The Other Candlestick
LI In the Adirondacks
LII Extracts from the Letters of Norman Westfall
LIII By Mic-co's Pool
LIV On the Westfall Lake


CHAPTER I

OF A GREAT WHITE BIRD UPON A LAKE

Spring was stealing lightly over the Connecticut hills, a shy, tender
thing of delicate green winging its way with witch-rod over the wooded
ridges and the sylvan paths of Diane Westfall's farm. And with the
spring had come a great hammering by the sheepfold and the stables
where a smiling horde of metropolitan workmen, sheltered by night in
the rambling old farmhouse, built an ingenious house upon wheels and
flirted with the house-maids.

Radiantly the spring swept from delicate shyness into a bolder glow of
leaf and flower. Dogwood snowed along the ridges, Solomon's seal
flowered thickly in the bogs, and following the path to the lake one
morning with Rex, a favorite St. Bernard, at her heels, Diane felt with
a thrill that the summer itself had come in the night with a
wind-flutter of wild flower and the fluting of nesting birds.

The woodland was deliciously green and cool and alive with the piping
of robins. Over the lake which glimmered faintly through the trees
ahead came the whir and hum of a giant bird which skimmed the lake with
snowy wing and came to rest like a truant gull. Of the habits of this
extraordinary bird Rex, barking, frankly disapproved, but finding his
mistress's attention held unduly by a chirping, bright-winged caucus of
birds of inferior size and interest, he barked and galloped off ahead.