260 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



were merely echoing from the wood. The bird 

 is as hard to locate by sound as an echo would be 

 and is usually much nearer than it seems when I 

 hear him. The second call is the last note of the 

 first one, three or four times repeated with such 

 rapidity that it has a flute-like reverberation that 

 is almost like a round and very musical purr. 

 The cry of this bird has been called eerie and dis- 

 quieting, but I do not think it so, even in the 

 loneliness of the question call. The satisfied one 

 is as gentle and cuddley as one can find among 

 birds. 



The pasture ghosts of still November nights 

 are apt to be most portentous between the hours 

 of midnight and dawn. The giants of eld stalk 

 noiselessly about them, figures of gray mist out 

 of a world of silence. Sometimes they rise like 

 simukcrums of ancient forest trees out of grassy 

 spots that by day were cosey with sunshine and 

 enclosed by barberry bushes hung with coral fruit 

 and prim cedars, spots where no tree has stood 

 these hundred years. Anon they change to dim 

 figures of preposterous beasts, called back to 

 earth for a brief hour while the old moon, worn 

 and thin, rises through them, a nebulous red cres- 



