CHAP. X A LITTLE BROTHER OF THE SEAR 289 



milky condition of sweet half-ripeness which so 

 attracts the squirrels, the mice, the birds and — 

 you and me, if you please ; and when he has 

 found it he strips back the husk as deftly as any 

 "neat-handed Phyllis," and disposes of the succu- 

 lent kernels with ease and rapidity. This is his 

 occupation and delight in the still hot August 

 nights, and no one has pictured it forth to our im- 

 agination as delicately as does Rowland Robinson 

 in his " New England Fields and Woods" : 



"Above the katydid's strident cry and the 

 piper's [green cricket's] incessant notes, a wild, 

 tremulous whinny shivers through the gloom at 

 intervals, now from a distant field or wood, now 

 from the near orchard. One listener will tell you 

 that it is only a little screech-owl's voice, another 

 that it is the raccoon's rallying-cry to a raid on the 

 cornfield. There is endless disputation concerning 

 it, and apparently no certainty, but the raccoon is 

 wilder than the owl, and it is his voice that you hear. 



"The corn is in the milk; the beast is ready. 

 The father and mother and well-grown children, 

 born and reared in the cavern of a ledge or hollow 

 tree of a' swamp, are hungry for sweets remem- 

 bered or yet untasted, and they are gathering to 

 it, stealing out of the thick darkness of the woods 

 and along the brbokside in single file, never stop- 

 ping to dig a fiery wake-robin bulb, nor to catch a 

 frog, nor to harry a late brood of ground-nesting 

 birds, but only to call some laggard, or distant 



