" Even the finger- 

 board is a living 

 pillar of ivy." 



in the top of his cap 

 lunged off across the 

 fields in some ill humor, no doubt. 

 Throughout the summer there was telegraph- 

 ing with and without wires on that dry, resonant 

 pole. And meantime, if there was anything un- 

 intelligible in the ciphers at Glasgow or Washing- 

 ton, it was high-hole talk. For there was reared 

 inside that pole as large, as noisy, and as red- 

 headed a family of flickers as ever hatched. What 

 a brood they were ! They must have snarled 

 the wires and Babelized their talk terribly. 

 [186] 



