192 A BED OF BOUGHS. 



barns. A boy twelve or thirteen years old came out 

 of a house ahead of us eating a piece of bread and- 

 butter. We soon overtook him and held converse 

 with him. He knew the land well, and what there 

 was in the woods and the waters. He had walked 

 out to the railroad station, fourteen miles distant, to 

 see the cars, and back the same day. I asked him 

 about the flies and mosquitoes, etc. He said they 

 were all gone except the " blunder-heads ; " there 

 were some of them left yet. 



" "What are blunder-heads ? " I inquired, sniffing 

 new game. 



" The pesky little fly that gets into your eye when 

 you are a-fishing." 



Ah, yes ! I knew him well. We had got acquainted 

 some days before, and I thanked the boy for the 

 name. It is an insect that hovers before your eye 

 as you thread the streams, and you are forever 

 vaguely brushing at it under the delusion that it is a 

 little spider suspended from your hat-brim, and just 

 as you want to see clearest, into your eye it goes, 

 head and ears, and is caught between the lids. You 

 miss your cast, but you catch a " blunder-head." 



We paused under a bridge at the mouth of Biscuit 

 Brook and ate our lunch, and I can recommend it to 

 be as good a wayside inn as the pedestrian need look 

 for. Better bread and milk than we had there I 

 never expect to find. The milk was indeed so good 

 that Aaron went down to the little log-house under 

 the hill a mile farther on and asked for more ; and 



