THE VOICES OF THE SEASONS 257 



ing, he might now almost name the day of the 

 month when he heard the twitter of the first 

 swallow, the flicker's heartening cackle, the jingle 

 of the bobolink's song, the swell and fall of the 

 plover's wail. 



The wind would stir the new leaves to tell him 

 they were out, and the patter of the rain upon 

 them would strengthen their testimony with a 

 sound unmistakably different from its leaden pelt- 

 ing of naked boughs and dead fields. The busy 

 hum of bees overhead would tell of the blossoming 

 of fruit trees, when the pendulous flowers of the 

 locust were sweetest, and when, in July, the tiny 

 bells of the basswood knoUed perfume to call all 

 the bees to the woods. 



He would know when summer burned hottest by 

 that very voice of heat, the shrill cry of the cicada, 

 and by the troubled notes of parent birds, anx- 

 iously watching the first adventures of their 

 chirping young in a world rimmed by a wider 

 horizon than the brink of the nest, and at night- 

 fall, by the crickets, creaking in full chorus with 

 earnest, tireless monotony. 



A little later would be heard the click of ripe 

 apples through the leaves and their rebounding 

 thuds upon the ground; at dusk, the screech owl 

 shivering out his gruesome cry in the old orchard 

 as if he "for all his feathers was a-cold" with the 

 chill of the first autumnal evenings; and from 



