CHAPTER VIII 



SPYING FROM THE ELM-CLUMP 



THE day was complete, perfect: a warm 

 August sun, a sky of the bluest, an 

 atmosphere racy with the tincture of 

 autumn — for the preceding night had brought 

 the first frost-touch of the season — the auditory 

 world ahum with lusty, full-voiced crickets, and 

 everywhere the sense of completeness and the 

 fulfillment of mature, ripened summer. As we 

 slipped through the oaks in the big wooded 

 pasture, there was something about the day and 

 the place that caused us to step on and on with- 

 out a word, or if we spoke at all, to converse 

 softly. Even the noisy kingbird had ceased his 

 boisterous clatter and activity, and a redtailed 

 hawk perched on the dry tip of an old oak at the 

 edge of the clearing seemed to have so far fallen 

 under the spell of the day that he forgot to 

 scream as usual, when we appeared. 



Our destination was an elm-clump standing 



106. 



