AT NATURAL BRIDGE 249 



to be ; looking at me with dull, unspecu- 

 lative eyes, and sometimes responding to a 

 pretty violent nudge with only a partial 

 closing of its lid. It is very fond of may 

 apples (mandrake), I was told, and is really 

 one of the " features " of the dry hill woods. 

 I ran upon it continually. 



A lazy afternoon jaunt over a lonely wood 

 road, untried before, yielded little of men- 

 tionable interest except the sight of a blue 

 grosbeak budding the upper branches of a 

 tree in the manner of a purple finch or a 

 rose-breast. I call him a blue grosbeak, as 

 I called him at the time ; but he went into 

 my book that evening with a damnatory 

 question mark attached to his name. He 

 had been rather far away and pretty high ; 

 and the possibilities of error magnified them- 

 selves on second thought, till I said to my- 

 self, " Well, he may have been an indigo- 

 bird, after all." Second thought is the 

 mother of uncertainty ; and uncertainties 

 are poor things for a man's comfort. The 

 seasons were met here ; for even while I 

 busied myself with the blue grosbeak (as he 

 pretty surely was, for all my want of assur- 

 ance) a crossbill flew over with loud calls. 



