WOODLAND PATHS 



them they are in the air. They have 

 surprisingly long legs and can jump tre- 

 mendously, turning in the air as they go, so 

 that, having landed, their next leap will take 

 them in a new direction. The earth seems 

 to swallow them as they touch it, for their 

 coloration is that of the brown leaves, and 

 they leap from one invisibility to the next. 

 Beyond the frog chorus I found my 

 stream again, dancing daintily along hem- 

 lock shaded shallows and rippling over 

 slate ledges in the latticed shade of oak 

 and maple twigs, and here another voice 

 called me, a staccato whistle with a sus- 

 picion of a trill in it now and then, the 

 voice of the very spirit of the spring 

 woodland, the hyla. I have called it a 

 whistle, yet it is hardly that; it is rather 

 the soft rich tone of a pipe, such as Pan 

 might have imitated when he first blew 

 into the hollow reed on the brook margin. 

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