218 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
ing, I forgot that I was wet and tired and hungry 
and bitten and stung. For the first time I listened 
to the song of the winter wren. For years I had met 
this little bird along the sides of brooks in the winter 
and running in and out of holes and under stones 
like a mouse; but to-day to me it was no longer a 
tiny bird. It was the voice of the untamed, unknown 
northern woods. It is hard to make any notation of 
the song. It flowed like some ethereal stream filled 
with little bubbles of music which broke in glassy 
tinkling sprays of sound over the under-current of 
the high vibrating melody itself. The song seemed 
to have two parts. The first ended in a contralto 
phrase, while the second soared like a fountain into 
a spray of tinkling trills. Through it all ran a strange 
unearthly dancing lilt, such as the fairy songs must 
have had, heard by wandering shepherds at the 
edge of the green fairy hills. At its very height the 
melody suddenly ceased, and once again I dropped 
back into a workaday, mosquito-ridden world, with 
ten miles between me and my camp. 
On that day I found two of the almost unknown, 
feather-lined nests of the yellow palm warbler, and 
climbed up to the jewel-casket of a bay-breasted 
warbler, and was shown the cherished secret of a 
Nashville warbler’s nest deep hidden in the sphag- 
num moss of a little tussock in the middle of a path- 
less morass. Yet my great adventure was the song of 
the winter wren. 
It was under quite different circumstances that I 
last heard the best winter singer of all. Never was 
