362 UPLAND SHOOTING. 



ishment from camp in case of failure two days being 

 allowed in which to accomplish it. 



Before sunrise next morning I was seated on a log, 

 half a mile from camp, anxiously waiting for Mr. 

 Gobbler to open the game at which he and I were to 

 play. It was a lovely spring morning. The violets and 

 the daisies had, ere this, breathed out their sweet 

 lives; the "red buds," that erstwhile wreathed with 

 pinkish blossoms every branch of the dark, polished 

 iron-wood trees, had all fallen, faded and limp, to the 

 earth in showers of sweetness, and, in the dim morning 

 light, looked like rose-leaves on the floor of a deserted 

 banquet-hall. The heavy, humid air still retained a faint 

 odor of the dying wild-plum blossoms, while the snowy 

 dogwood flowers were busily breaking their buds into 

 bloom, bridal-wreathing the gladsome spring. A mag- 

 nificent trumpet- vine, right over me, clinging to a dead 

 tree, and enwrapping itself around and about it, embow- 

 ering it in a shaft of living green, reaching skyward, 

 reminds me of Wirt' s beautiful words about the vine and 

 the oak the wife, and the broken, discouraged husband. 

 The time of its flowers, grand carnation trumpets, is not 

 yet. Delicate silvery-green leaves are struggling into 

 form and dimension on elm, and oak, and blackberry, 

 and alder, while, here and there, a, greenbrier-vine 

 unfolds its broad young leaves, ruddy with vigor, and 

 lovely with blushing beauty, not unlike delicate-tinted 

 Venetian gloss. The woods teem with life, and a thou- 

 sand wildwood voices are heard, from the scarlet song- 

 ster right in front of me, sending forth every few 

 moments his praiseful "tube, tube, tube," as he sits on 

 topmost twig of a tall elm, whose gracefully rounded and 

 upr caching bowers make for him a throne, silvery- 

 sheeny in the first rays of the morning sun, to the blue- 

 backed, white-breasted chorister whose name I never 



