h,--little
scaffoldings of twigs scattered all through the trees.

It was nearly noon when we struck the West Branch, and the sun was
scalding hot. We knew that two and three pound trout had been taken
there, and yet we wet not a line in its waters. The scene was
primitive, and carried one back to the days of his grandfather, stumpy
fields, log fences, log houses and barns. A boy twelve or thirteen
years old came out of a house ahead of us eating a piece of bread and
butter. We soon overtook him and held converse with him. He knew the
land well, and what there was in the woods and the waters. He had
walked out to the railroad station, fourteen miles distant, to see the
cars, and back the same day. I asked him about the flies and
mosquitoes, etc. He said they were all gone except the "blunder-heads;"
there were some of them left yet.

"What are blunder-heads?" I inquired, sniffing new game.

"The pesky little fly that gets into your eye when you are a-fishing."

Ah, yes! I knew him well. We had got acquainted some days before, and I
thanked the boy for the name. It is an insect that hovers before your
eye as you thread the streams, and you are forever vaguely brushing at
it under the delusion that it is a little spider suspended from your
hat-brim; and just as you want to see clearest, into your eye it goes,
head and ears, and is caught between the lids. You miss your cast, but
you catch a "blunder-head."

We paused under a bridge at the mouth of Biscuit Brook and ate our
lunch, and I can recommend it to be as good a wayside inn as the
pedestrian need look for. Better bread and milk than we had there I
never expect to find. The milk was indeed so good that Aaron went down
to the little log house under the hill a mile farther on and asked for
more; and being told they had no cow, he lingered five minutes on the
doorstone with his sooty pail in his hand, putting idle questions about
the way and distance to the mother while he refreshed himself with the
sight of a well-dressed and comely-looking young girl, her daughter.

"I got no milk," said he, hurrying on after me, "but I got something
better, only I cannot divide it."

"I know what it is," replied I; "I heard her voice."

"Yes, and it was a good one, too. The sweetest sound I ever heard," he
went on, "was a girl's voice after I had been four years in the army,
and, by Jove! if I didn't experience something of the same pleasure in
hearing this young girl speak