New Walks in Old Ways 



could escape the drift upon dangerous 

 rocks. Finally, however, about mid- 

 June a stronger arm came to my relief, 

 and I was put ashore at a port remote 

 from the road-steads of commerce and 

 industry. 



I knew I was going to give up my 

 seat for a time at least, for two old 

 friends of mine had lately called to me 

 in tones not to be successfully re- 

 sisted. One was a whip-poor-will; the 

 other a yellow-billed cuckoo. How 

 these shy creatures of wildwood thick- 

 ets ever found their way across the 

 miles of brick and stone and concrete 

 that separated me at the time from 

 the big world of the out-of-doors, I 

 shall never know. They did not come 

 nor go together. One broke the still- 

 ness of the night with startling sudden- 

 ness, repeating his old familiar cry 

 insistently for perhaps a hundred times, 

 and then was gone. He was so far 

 from his own accustomed haunts, that 

 I took the call as personal to myself. 



[6] 



