CHAPTER II. 

 BUZZARD'S REST. 



THE blackness of night hung over the east, when to 

 please me, at least it should have been brilliant with 

 the sun's cheery rays. " Would it rain ?" I asked my- 

 self at every step, and scores of times paused to see if 

 Nature did not somewhere throw out to me a hint. " A 

 gray east is a dry day," my neighbors persist in saying, 

 but could I be sure of this ? Then there was the rhyme 

 about " Evening red and morning gray," and all that ; 

 but here was a blue-black east, and a generally smoke- 

 colored outlook, and I knew not what it meant. 



There are, I think, weather sayings enough still cur- 

 rent in this neighborhood to make a portly volume, and 

 accepted by my neighbors as of greater reliability than 

 the daily reports in the morning papers. I could, how- 

 ever, recall none that fitted this peculiar August morn- 

 ing, and wished I had Miles Overfield's opinion, not so 

 much for its intrinsic value as a matter of curiosity. " I 

 do not see," Miles once remarked, " that this newspaper 

 weather business amounts to much. The old-fashioned 

 almanacs had it down for a whole year, and in handier 

 shape." 



" But not quite so reliable," I suggested. 



" It was as near right as you get it now," he replied, 

 with great earnestness. " Of course, once in a while 



