WEATHER AND THE SKY 205 



under the shadow of the White Mountains, and whose 

 instinct for weather changes was almost uncanny. 

 She did not have barometrical bones, either, as so 

 many old people maintain they have. Her deductions 

 were all based on observation. Once, I recall, she was 

 taking in some clothes from the line, at ten o'clock at 

 night a still, starlit night without a cloud. I saw 

 her shadow bobbing about, huge and fantastic, on 

 the barn wall, thrown from the lantern she carried in 

 her left hand, and went out to ask her why she took 

 the clothes in. 



"There wa'n't a cloud in the sky all day," she said, 

 "and to-night the mountain's talkin'." 



I listened carefully, and sure enough in the silence I 

 could hear, three thousand feet above us, the steady 

 rush of wind through the stunted spruce forest at 

 timber line. Up there the wind was roaring, then! I 

 thought of Martineau's words, that the noisy hurricane 

 rushes silently through the upper spaces where there 

 is nothing to oppose it that force by itself is silent. 

 There seemed to me something almost Celtic, too, in 

 this old Yankee woman's imagery. And her prediction 

 proved correct: the next day came a deluge. 



In this connection, I wonder how many boys used 

 to do what we lads did twenty-five years ago in eastern 

 Massachusetts. We would lay our ears to the tele- 

 graph poles, and if "the wires were buzzing," as we put 

 it, we felt sure we were in for bad weather. This 



