She Bay of the Band 
waiting for an accident to reveal its maker and its 
meaning to me. 
There were accidents and discoveries of many 
sorts during these years, but not this particular acci- 
dent. The accident you wait for is slow in coming. 
We were seated one evening on the porch listen- 
ing to the whip-poor-wills, when some one said, 
“There’s your woodchuck singing again.” Sure 
enough, there sounded the tremulous woodchuck- 
partridge-coon-owl cry, and I slipped down through 
the birches determined to know that cry if I had to 
follow it all night. 
The moon was highand full, the footing almost noise- 
less, and everything so quiet that I quickly located 
the clucking sounds as coming from the orchard. I 
came out of the birches into the wood road, and was 
crossing the open field to the orchard, when some- 
thing dropped with a swish and a vicious clacking 
almost upon my head. I jumped from under, —I 
should say a part of my hair,—and saw a screech 
owl swoop softly up into the nearest apple tree. In- 
stantly she turned toward me and uttered the gentle 
purring cluck that I had been guessing so hard at for 
at least three years. And even while I looked at her 
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