self by heightening the delusion of the
looker-on. My own more commonplace conjecture is that the sounds are
produced by snappings and gratings of the big mandibles ("He is gritting
his teeth," said a shrewd unornithological Yankee, whose opinion I had
solicited), and that the wing movements may be nothing but involuntary
accompaniments of this almost convulsive action of the beak. But perhaps
the sounds _are_ wing-made, after all.

On the day of which I am writing, at any rate, I was troubled by no
misgivings. I had seen something new, and was only desirous to see more
of it. Who does not love an original character? For at least half an
hour the old mill was forgotten, while I chased the grackle about, as he
flew hither and thither, sometimes with a loggerhead shrike in furious
pursuit. Once I had gone a few rods into the palmetto scrub, partly to
be nearer the bird, but still more to enjoy the shadow of a pine, and
was standing under the tree, motionless, when a man came along the road
in a gig. "Surveying?" he asked, reining in his horse. "No, sir; I am
looking at a bird in the tree yonder." I wished him to go on, and
thought it best to gratify his curiosity at once. He was silent a
moment; then he said, "Looking at the old sugar house from there?" That
was too preposterous, and I answered with more voice, and perhaps with a
touch of impatience, "No, no; I am trying to see a bird in that
pine-tree." He was silent again. Then he gathered up the reins. "I'm so
deaf I can't hear you," he said, and drove on. "Good-by," I remarked, in
a needless undertone; "you're a good man, I've no doubt, but deaf people
shouldn't be inquisitive at long range."

The advice was sound enough, in itself considered; properly understood,
it might be held to contain, or at least to suggest, one of the
profoundest, and at the same time one of the most practical, truths of
all devout philosophy; but the testiness of its tone was little to my
credit. He _was_ a good man,--and the village doctor,--and more than
once afterward put me under obligation. One of his best appreciated
favors was unintended and indirect. I was driving with him through the
hammock, and we passed a bit of swamp. "There are some pretty flowers,"
he exclaimed; "I think I must get them." At the word he jumped out of
the gig, bade me do the same, hitched his horse, a half-broken stallion,
to a sapling, and plunged into the thicket. I strolled elsewhere; and by
and by he came