240 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



so I did now. A few birds flitted about the 

 summit: two or three snowbirds, to whom 

 the unusual presence of a man was plainly 

 a trouble (" Why can't he stay up in the 

 observatory, like the rest of his kind? ") ; a 

 myrtle warbler, chirping softly as he passed ; 

 a white-throat, whistling now and then from 

 somewhere down the cliffs ; an alder fly- 

 catcher, calling quay-queer (a surprising 

 place this dry mountain-top seemed for a 

 lover of swampy thickets) ; an occasional 

 barn swallow or chimney swift, shooting to 

 and fro under the sky ; and once a sparrow 

 hawk, welcome for his rarity, sailing away 

 from me down the valley, showing a rusty 

 tail. 



By and by, seeing that the crowd had 

 gone, I clambered up the rocks, eating blue- 

 berries by the way, and mounted the stairs 

 to the observatory, where the keeper of the 

 place was talking with two men (a musician 

 and a commercial traveler, if my practice 

 as an "observer" counted for anything), 

 who had lingered to survey the panorama. 

 The conversation turned upon the usual 

 topics, especially the Mount Washington 



