234 Clear Skies and Cloudy. 



Miles Overfield knew every tree on the broad 

 reach of meadows, and what each one was to 

 every bird and beast of the wide waste of swamp 

 and weedy pasture. There was not a bird that 

 nested here but he could lead me to its haunts, 

 nor mink or muskrat, opossum, skunk, or rac- 

 coon, but he knew where it hid by day and 

 where by night it was likely to wander. A 

 hunter, in all this, but this was not all. He dis- 

 cerned their relations to one another and to the 

 world at large. No mere hunter, bent only 

 upon his game with all the savagery of hawks 

 bent upon their prey, but a naturalist in the 

 widest sense, taking comprehensive views of 

 what lay before him ; grasping with quick intel- 

 ligence a fact, and what mankind so generally 

 fail to do grasping its full significance, the re- 

 lation of one fact to all others. Since his primer 

 was tossed aside with a shout of joy, as of a 

 prisoner set free, his eyes had seldom rested on 

 a printed page, and never quite understandingly ; 

 yet Miles Overfield, though unlettered, was not 

 unlearned. A congregation of scientists might 

 have confused him, could they have cornered 

 him in their book-lined halls ; but what of these 



