THE CONQUEST OF PEG AN HILL. 117 



The air was filled with a silvery haze which 

 made distance mysterious, and the nearer land- 

 scape dreamy and full of suggestions of Indian 

 summer. The songs of field sparrows rippled 

 continuously across the hillside. A pigeon 

 woodpecker " flickered " persistently in a grove 

 of maples and chestnuts. While standing be- 

 hind a stone wall and half concealed by its reti- 

 nue of bushes we heard a rippling warbler-song 

 and caught a flash of gold and green in a bar- 

 berry bush close at hand. A slender bird about 

 five inches long, golden olive-brown above and 

 rich yellow beneath, paused in the barberry for 

 us to watch him. As he moved his dainty head 

 we saw that his crown was reddish chestnut, and 

 as he threw up his head to sing we saw that his 

 breast and sides were lightly pencilled with a 

 similar shade. Although I had heard the pine 

 warbler sing, this, a yellow red-poll warbler, was 

 the first of the great migrating family of Sylvi- 

 colidce which I had met this spring. As my 

 heart grew warm towards him a crow and a 

 dashing little falcon rose from behind the hill 

 and whirled together in the air. We promptly 

 forgot the tiny warbler, dropped behind the 

 wall, and fixed our glasses on the falcon, which 

 had alighted on the highest plume of a low pitch- 

 pine. Suddenly it swooped to the ground, 

 caught an insect from the grass, and came to a 



