120 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES. 
the half-dozen well worn volumes scattered 
about give a strange air to this woodland 
bower. No farm or plantation is in sight. 
If you can hear any sound of busy human life, 
itis the singing of some merry negroes pro- 
pelling a corn-boat down the river. Usually 
these boats passed us in the night. They 
were a kind of long, low keel craft with stern 
paddle and oars. Midway of the boat were 
heaped the white sacks of corn. ‘The tall 
dusky oarsmen swayed to and fro singing 
meanwhile some outlandish but strangely fas- 
cinating song. 
Here by the flaring light of burning pine- 
knots we read Keats and Theocritus, Shelley 
and Ovid in turn. Our concurrent studies 
were not plainly congruous, rather conflict- 
ing, one might think, for we studied Greek, 
practised archery, collected birds-eggs, made 
water-color drawings of plants and _ birds, 
read poetry, boated, swam, practised taxi- 
dermy, fenced with reed foils, fished for bass, 
and cooked admirable dinners! A little way 
off stood our cabin, or rather, our hut, into 
which a sudden shower of rain now and then 
drove us. When the nights were clear we 
hung our hammocks in the palace, and slept 
suspended in the perfumed breeze. Often I 
awoke in the small hours and heard the rac- 
coons growling and chattering in the brake. 
At such times the swash of the river had a 
strangely soothing effect, a lullaby of fairy 
land, 
Will had a nocturnal habit. He would slip 
forth, when the moon shone, long after I had 
gone to sleep, and the twang of his bowstring 
would startle me from quiet dreams as he let 
