328 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



just bob up, which would seem to prove a mystic 

 origin; though of course they are just folks and 

 somebody knows them, as I have said. 



Soon the air resounds with the xylophone 

 music of their chopping, the solid surface vibrat- 

 ing beneath the blows of the axe and giving forth 

 a clear tintinnabulation which is most delightful 

 to the ear. It is not all xylophonic, but there is 

 in it, too, the clink of musical glasses and also 

 a certain weirdness, a goblin withal that seems to 

 belong with the mystery surrounding the origin 

 of pickerel fishermen. It is a sound to delight 

 the ear and linger pleasantly in the memory like 

 the sleighbell tinkling of ice crystals in a frozen 

 wood. Stirred by this, or perhaps by the beat of 

 the risen sun on its surface, the pond itself be- 

 gins to caper a bit, musically, roaring in basso 

 profundo a morning song of its own. The re- 

 sult is grotesque in the extreme. I once heard 

 a big-chested man sing ''Rocked in the Cradle of 

 the Deep," while his accompanist jigged out an 

 accompaniment on the highest octave to be found 

 on the keyboard of the piano. The pond and the 

 fishermen seem to be doing something like this. 



To such quaint music the traps are set, bits 



