MY REAL ESTATE. 21 



they greeted me with songs. But it would 

 hardly have been courteous for me to pro- 

 pose the matter, and evidently it did not 

 occur to them. At all events, I heard no 

 music except the hoarse and solemn assev- 

 erations of the katydids, the gentler mes- 

 sage of the crickets, and in the distance an 

 occasional roll-call of the grouse. My dog 

 who is a much better sportsman than 

 myself, but whose companionship, I am 

 ashamed to see, has not till now been men- 

 tioned was all the while making forays 

 hither and thither into the surrounding 

 woods ; and once in a while I heard, what 

 is the best of all music in his ears, the 

 whir of " partridge " wings. Likely as not 

 he thought it a queer freak on my part to 

 spend the afternoon thus idly, when with a 

 gun I might have been so much more profit- 

 ably employed. He could not know that 

 I was satiating myself with a miser's de- 

 lights, feasting my eyes upon my own. In 

 truth, I fancy he takes it for granted that 

 the whole forest belongs to me and to 

 him. Perhaps it does. As I said just 

 now, I sometimes think so myself. 



