lled off my hat, but I pushed painfully
forward. They tore at my hair; they caught an end of my tie and drew out
the bow. Finally they made a simultaneous and well-planned assault upon
my hair, my neck, my left arm, raised to push them back, and my right,
extended to hold and guide that quivering, undulating rod. I was
helpless, unless I wished to be torn in shreds. At that moment, as I
stood poised, hot, baffled, smarting and stinging with bramble
scratches, wishing I could swear like a man and have it out, the air was
filled with the liquid notes of a wood thrush. I love the wood thrush
best of all; but that he should choose this moment! It was the final
touch.

I whistled the blue-jay note, which means "Come," and Jonathan came
threshing through the brush, having left his rod.

"Where are you?" he called; "I can't see you."

"No, you can't," I responded unamiably. "You probably never will see me
again, at least not in any recognizable form. Help me out!" The thrush
sang again, one tree farther away. "No! First kill that thrush!" I added
between set teeth, as a slight motion of mine set the brambles raking
again.

"Why, why, my dear, what's this?" Then, as he caught sight of me, "Well!
You are tied up! Wait; I'll get out my knife."

He cut here and there, and one after another, with a farewell stab or
scratch, the maddening things reluctantly let go their hold. Meanwhile
Jonathan made placid remarks about the proper way to go through brush.
"You go too fast, you know. You can't hurry these things, and you can't
bully them. I don't see how you manage to get scratched up so. I never
do."

"Jonathan, you are as tactless as the thrush."

"Don't kill me yet, though. Wait till I cut this last fellow. There! Now
you're free. By George! But you're a wreck!"

That was the last time I ever tried to "work through brush," as Jonathan
calls it. If I can catch trout by any method compatible with sanity, I
am ready to do it, but as for allowing myself to be drawn into a
situation wherein the note of the wood thrush stirs thoughts of murder
in my breast--at that point, I opine, sport ceases.

So on that day of our runaway I kept to open waters and preserved a
placid mind. The air was full of bird notes--in the big open woods the
clear "whick-ya, whick-ya, whick-ya" of the courting yellowhammers, in
the meadows bluebirds with their shy, vanishing call that is over almost
before you can begin to listen, meadowlarks poignantl