Windy Bush. 113 



ture and hair-breadth escape were heard again, 

 for an hour I lived in an earlier century. 



It is well that the scene should shift suddenly. 

 It was but a step to the deep woods, and both M. 

 and myself aimed for the time to live a free wild 

 life, in touch only with uncontaminated Nature. 

 Birds sang almost without a pause, yet the woods 

 were silent. The brief intermissions were so 

 deadly still that about us we had not sound, but 

 silence framed in song. Yet this is Windy Bush, 

 and suggestive of tumult rather than peace. It 

 was the trees' holiday, I concluded, for no rude 

 blasts troubled them, and the fitful breezes were 

 considerate. The truth is, they happened to pass 

 by high overhead, as the masses of white clouds 

 clearly showed. When, particularly in winter, 

 these blasts of cruel air swept across the hill, it is 

 not strange that every tree shivered and the dang- 

 ling dead leaves rattled, and suggested all manner 

 of uncanny thoughts to the Indians. Indeed, 

 they claimed that summer or winter the wind 

 never ceased, and hence the name that still clings 

 to it. Later, these rustling leaves made faint- 

 hearted folk a little timid, or, as the octogenarian 



o 



h 10* 



