66 IN THE HEMLOCKS. 



she seems to sit closer, her eyes growing large with an 

 inexpressibly wild, beautiful look. She keeps her place 

 till I am within two paces of her, when she flutters away 

 as at first. In the brief interval the remaining egg has 

 hatched, and the two little nestlings lift their heads 

 without being jostled or overreached by any strange 

 bedfellow. A week afterward and they were flown 

 away, — so brief is the infancy of birds. And the won- 

 der is that they escape, even for this short time, the 

 skunks and minks and muskrats that abound here, and 

 that have a decided partiality for such tidbits. 



I pass on through the old Barkpeeling, now thread- 

 ing an obscure cow-path or an overgrown wood-road ; 

 now clambering over soft and decayed logs, or forcing 

 my way through a net-work of briers and hazels ; now 

 entering a perfect bower of wild-cherry, beech, and soft- 

 maple ; now emerging into a little grassy lane, golden 

 with buttercups or white with daisies, or wading waist- 

 deep in the red raspberry-bushes. 



Whir ! whir ! whir ! and a brood of half-grown par- 

 tridges start up like an explosion, a few paces from me, 

 and, scattering, disappear in the bushes on all sides. 

 Let me sit down here behind this screen of ferns and 

 briers, and hear this wild-hen of the woods call together 

 her brood. At what an early age the partridge flies ! 

 Nature seems to concentrate her energies on the wing, 

 making the safety of the bird a point to be looked after 

 first ; and while the body is covered with down, and no 

 signs of feathers are visible, the wing-quills sprout and 



