THE WONDERFUL SONG. 7 



" The veery ! " I whispered. 



" Is that the veery ? " she exclaimed. (She 

 had come from the home of the wood thrush, 

 where hermit and veery were unknown.) 



" Yes," I said ; " listen." 



Again it came, more plaintive than before; 

 once more, in an almost agonized tone ; and so 

 it continued, ever growing higher in pitch and 

 more mournful, till we could hardly endure to 

 listen to it. Then arose the matchless song, 

 the very breath of the woods, the solemn, mys- 

 terious, wonderful song of the bird, and two 

 listeners, at least, lingered in ecstasy to hear, 

 till it dropped to silence again. 



Then, slowly and leisurely, we went on. The 

 dead hemlock, the throne of the hermit, was 

 vacant. On a bank not far off we sat down 

 to wait, talking in hushed tones of the veery, of 

 the oven-bird whose rattling call was now just 

 beginning, of the mysterious " see-here " bird 

 whose plaintive call was sounding from the 

 upper twig of another dead-topped tree, of the 

 hermit himself, when, to our amazement, a small 

 bird soared out of the woods, a few feet above 

 our heads, flew around in a circle of perhaps fif- 

 teen feet in the air, and plunged again into the 

 trees, singing all the time a rapturous, thrilling 

 song, bewitching both in manner and in tone. 



" The oven-bird ! " we exclaimed in a breath. 



