170 FOOTING IT IN FRANCONIA 



pewees, both with musical whistles, one like 

 a challenge, the other an elegy; a family 

 group of chestnut-sided warblers, parents 

 and young, conversing softly among them- 

 selves about the events of the day, mostly 

 gastronomic ; a robin and a white-throated 

 sparrow in song ; three or four chickadees, 

 lisping and deeing ; a siskin or two, a song 

 sparrow, and a red-eyed vireo. The whole 

 tract was purple with willow herb — which 

 follows fire as surely as boys follow a fire en- 

 gine — and white with pearly immortelles. 



Once out of this open space — this forest 

 cemetery, one might say, though the dead 

 were not buried, but stood upright like 

 bleached skeletons, with arms outstretched 

 — I was again immersed in leafy silence, 

 which lasted till I approached the lake. 

 Here I heard before me the tweeting of sand- 

 pipers, and presently came in sight of two 

 sohtaries (migrants already, though it was 

 only the 4th of August), each bobbing ner- 

 vously upon its boulder a little off shore. 

 The eye of the ornithologist took them in : 

 dark green legs ; dark, slender bills ; bob- 

 bing, not teetering — Totanus, not Actitis. 



