8 THE FACE OF THE FIELDS 



instant on your walk to-day, or think you see it ; 

 but there are the birds singing as before, and as 

 before the red squirrel, under cover of large words, 

 is prying into your purposes. The universal cho- 

 rus of nature is never stilled. This part, or that, 

 may cease for a moment, for a season it may be, 

 only to let some other part take up the strain ; as 

 the winter's deep bass voices take it from the soft 

 lips of the summer, and roll it into thunder, until 

 the naked hills seem to rock to the measures of 

 the song. 



So must we listen to the winter winds, to the 

 whistle of the soaring hawk, to the cry of the 

 trailing hounds. 



I have had more than one hunter grip me ex- 

 citedly, and with almost a command bid me hear 

 the music of the baying pack. There are hollow 

 halls in the swamps that lie to the east and north 

 and west of me, that catch up the cry of the fox 

 hounds, that blend it, mellow it, round it, and 

 roll it, rising and falling over the meadows these 

 autumn nights in great globes of sound, as pure 

 and sweet as the pearly notes of the wood thrush 

 rolling around their silver basin in the summer 

 dusk. 



