192 WASTE-LAND WANDERINGS. 



down on me. Was my boasting to come to naught, 

 thought I ; but before I heard the faintest trumpeting 

 a breeze had carried them to the distant hills. It was 

 but an intimation that pride was liable to a fall at all 

 times, so I became humble a curious sensation and es- 

 sayed to study life from my novel point of view. The 

 first bird that I saw was a swallow. I marked it as it 

 passed a gaunt -armed chestnut, tardy with its bloom. 

 Tarrying not, it circled the leafy crown of clustered 

 beeches, scanned the deep caverns of a gnarly oak, trav- 

 ersed a maze of birches, elms, and maples, threaded its 

 way through tangled growths beneath, and twittering to 

 its fellows as it passed, hurried to greet a passing feath- 

 ery cloud, and from the upper regions viewed afar the 

 misty mountains, miles and miles away. 



Perhaps a threatening storm-cloud drove it thence, 

 but swift as an arrow back again it came, and I felt my 

 cheek fanned by the creature's wing. Off then to the 

 river shore it sped, and tricked each leaping wave that 

 sought to catch it, peered into every nook and cranny 

 of the stream, cast a fleet shadow upon every rock, 

 bathed in the spray, basked in the sunshine, and then 

 outspeeding vision sought the cool shadows of a wild 

 ravine. Then, upward and outward in a flood of light, 

 it circled a sink-hole in an upland field, counted the queer 

 corners of a zigzag fence, and played bopeep with a lit- 

 tle whirlwind, as it bore a dust pillar to my neighbor's 

 woods. Checking its course, it turned abruptly and 

 sought the Mill Creek shadows whence it started. 



Was it gone an hour ? By ray watch not five min- 

 utes. I saw almost at the same moment the steam from 



