CHAPTER XII SIERRA THUNDER-STORMS The weather of spring and summer in the middle region of the Sierra is usually well flecked with rains and light dustings of snow, most of which are far too obviously joyful and life-giving to be regarded as storms; and in the picturesque beauty and clearness of outlines of their clouds they offer striking contrasts to those boundless, all-embracing cloud-mantles of the storms of winter.

Art is long, and art is limited, you know; and here are foregrounds, middle-grounds, backgrounds, all alike; bare rock-waves, woods, groves, diminutive flecks of meadow, and strips of glittering water."

"Is Mr. Fleck in?"

They are like the little flecks on the top of a wave.

If you locate her telephone Mr. Fleck at once.

" She slept like a child on her father's floor In the flecking of woodbine-shade, When the house-dog sprawls by the open door, And the mother's wheel is staid.

It was a surprising sight, this great trialthe gloomy hall, black with age and deeds of darkness, lit by the rays of sunlight falling through windows of red glass, the faces of men flecked as with blood where the evening sunlight streamed luridly upon them.

Returning, she flashed it about the room, endeavoring to assist Fleck by its light.

In these, too, may be observed those touches of brilliant color,bits of gleaming drapery, perhaps,prophetic flecks along the gray dawn.