Il6 PASTORAL DAYS. 



its mellow glow upon the rocks among their recesses. It permeates the 

 whole interior as though it were transfigured through a golden-colored 

 glass. 



A quick, sharp whistle surprises you from the herbage near by, and a 

 striped chickaree skips across the leaves and dives into his burrow at the 

 foot of an old stump not far away. There are various other sounds that 

 come to you if you sit quietly in a beech wood. Now it is a tiny footfall, 

 a pat-pat upon the leaves, and a little brown bird is seen, hopping in and 

 out among the undergrowth, scratching and pecking like a little hen 

 among the leaf mould. Then comes a galloping sound, and you know 

 there is a scampering hare somewhere about. And at last a peeping 

 frog gains confidence, and starts up a trill somewhere behind you. He 

 is soon joined by another, and still others, until a chorus of the shrill 

 voices echoes among the trees, some from the ground, some from the 

 limbs overhead ; and if you only sit perfectly still, you may hear a vent- 

 uresome voice, perhaps, at your very elbow ; for these little peepers are 

 capricious songsters, and only sing before a quiet, attentive audience. 

 Now a silly green katydid flits by, like an animated gauzy leaf ; and 

 quick as thought a kingbird darts out from the leaves overhead, hovers 

 in mid-air for a second, and is away again ; and luckless katydid wishes 

 she hadn't. 



See the variety of beeches, too ! Here are slender, dappled stems, 

 clean and trim ; and others, great giants with fluted trunks and gnarled 

 roots, and with eccentric limbs reaching out in most fantastic angles ; but 

 all spreading above in a graceful, airy screen of intermingled tracery and 

 sunlight, where slender branches bend and sway beneath the agile squirrel 

 as he leaps from tree to tree, and the leaves clatter with the falling nuts. 

 Behind us a soft fluttering of many wings betrays a slender mountain-ash, 

 with its drooping clusters of berries, growing in an open, rocky space near 

 by — where a flock of cedar birds assemble among the fruit, or scatter 

 away amid the evergreens at your slightest movement. Turning your 

 head in another direction, you can follow the course of an old farm-road 

 that leads out upon a bright clearing, thick-set with light-green, feathery 

 ferns. A few rods beyond, it makes a sudden downward turn through a 

 dense grove of lofty pines and hemlocks. Here are " dim aisles " where 

 dwell perpetual twilight — where no ray of sun has entered for well-nigh a 

 century — only, perhaps, as it is brought down in a glistening sunbeam 

 within the crystal bead of balsam upon some dropping cone. There is a 



