208 AT THE NORTH OF BE ARC AMP WATER . 
it, but found it blessing me, for it was much to 
me, while I was nothing to it. Rift and rock 
were there before I took breath, and they will 
be there centuries after I am a vanished mote 
in the sky. Just as I left the ledge, homeward 
bound, a bird call rang out sharply. I listened 
and a low tremulous song came from the 
spruces. Sweeping their serrated border with 
my glass, I found the birds and recognized 
them ere they flew, uttering the same sad plaint 
I had heard an hour before. They were a pair 
of pine grosbeaks, 64 winter robins” as the 
farmers call them; one a male, with his rosy 
breast, the other his Quaker mate. Flinging 
themselves into space, they flew southwestward 
till my glass could follow them no longer. 
Passing through the beech woods on my way 
down the mountain, I noticed how much more 
firmly the leaves clung to the young trees than 
to the older ones. Many of them, if pulled 
steadily by the tip, tore sooner than give way 
at the stalk. On oak and poplar sprouts or 
suckers, the leaves remain much longer than on 
old wood; they keep their rich coloring far into 
November, and they are often very conspicuous 
by reason of their great size. 
I found more life stirring in these beech 
woods than anywhere else. Squirrels both red 
and gray were hard at work upon the ground, 
