When the Birds Fly South by Stanton A. Coblentz

It was with a flaming expectation and a growing joy that I watched the spring gradually burst into blossom. The appearance of the first green grass, the unfolding of the pale yellowish leaves on the trees, the budding of the earliest wildflowers and the cloudy pink and white of the orchards, were as successive signals from a new world. And the clear bright skies, the fresh gentle breezes, and the birds twittering from unseen branches, all seemed to join in murmuring the same refrain: the warmer days were coming, the days of my deliverance! Soon, very soon, the Ibandru would be back! And among the Ibandru I should see Yasma!

Every morning now I awakened with reborn hope; and every morning, and all the day, I would go ambling about the village, peering into the deserted huts and glancing toward the woods for sign of some welcome returning figure. But at first all my waiting seemed of no avail. The Ibandru did not return; and in the evening I would slouch back to my cabin in dejection that would always make way for new hope. Day after day passed thus; and meantime the last traces of winter were vanishing, the fields became dotted with waving rose-red and violet and pale lemon tints; the deciduous trees were taking on a sturdier green; insects began to chirp and murmur in many a reviving chorus; and the woods seemed more thickly populated with winged singers.