210 LITERARY PILGRIMAGES 



roar that shrills in the ears and rings through the 

 head till the deafened hearer is driven to the 

 upland again. 



On the lake margin in the failing light it came 

 to me as a sleepy drone of tiny bells, as if goblin 

 sleighing parties were coursing gayly in the night 

 on the white May snow of petals beneath the bird 

 cherry trees. It and the dreamy trilling of the 

 tree frogs were but a background for the voices 

 of night birds that sounded now that those of the 

 day birds had passed. High in air floated the 

 nasal " peent, peent," of whirling nighthawks. 

 Out of the velvet dusk across the glimmering 

 water I heard a bittern working his old-fashioned 

 pump, wheezily. " Cahugunkagunk, cahugun- 

 kagunk," he burbled, the weirdest bird voice of 

 any that comes from marsh or mountain, yet in 

 the peacefulness of the place sounding neither 

 lonely nor uncouth. I fancy him, too, with his 

 long beak pointed to the heights, worshiping the 

 mountain peak in his own tongue. Whip-poor- 

 wills mourned gently one to another across the 

 water as a token that the night had really come 

 and the last glow faded from the lone summit now 



