NATURE IN LITTLE 



awaken, was vocal in that cry. As for the utterly 

 forlorn and heart-breaking crescendo of the mid- 

 night wail I heard from my sleeping-porch, I have 

 never heard anything approaching it from man or 

 beast. 



There were traditions in the neighborhood of 

 some such mysterious cry having been heard here 

 and there for the past seven or eight years, frighten- 

 ing horses at night, causing them to tremble and 

 snort and stop in the road, and almost paralyzing 

 with fear a young fellow and his girl crossing from 

 one valley to another on their way home from a 

 country dance. 



Six years ago, on a warm July night, a woman 

 friend of mine and her son, of sixteen or eighteen, 

 were passing the night in hammocks in my orchard, 

 when near midnight they came hurrying to the 

 house in a great state of agitation; they had heard 

 a terrible, blood-curdling cry. I laughed at them as 

 city tenderfeet, told them they had probably heard 

 the squall of a fox, or the cry of an owl, or a coon. 

 They did not care what it was, but they would not 

 return to their hammocks, or even try to pass an- 

 other night there. They have since told me that the 

 fearful cry they heard was like the one I described. 

 An old woodsman and hunter has told me that 

 I heard the cry of the Canada lynx. And he is prob- 

 ably correct, though I can find no record in the 

 books that the lynx has such a cry. In the winter of 



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