s into her confidence; who has, as it were, an inner and
subtler sense, corresponding to each grosser and external one; who is
keen-sighted enough to read the character of every individual beast, and
has ears sensitive to the full pathos of joy or sorrow in the song of
the birds that inhabit our woodlands."

"Whether he has any such second set of senses as you speak of, I
don't know; but there can be no doubt that his familiarity, not to
say intimacy, with birds and beasts gives him a great advantage as a
naturalist. I suppose you know that his little book has been translated
into French, and rewarded with the gold medal of the Academy."

"Hush! What is that?" Augusta sprang up, and held her hand to her ear.

"Some love-lorn mountain-cock playing yonder in the pine copse,"
suggested Arnfinn, amused at his cousin's eagerness.

"You silly boy! Don't you know the mountain-cock never plays except at
sunrise?"

"He would have a sorry time of it now, then, when there IS no sunrise."

"And so he has; he does not play except in early spring."

The noise, at first faint, now grew louder. It began with a series of
mellow, plaintive clucks that followed thickly one upon another, like
smooth pearls of sound that rolled through the throat in a continuous
current; then came a few sharp notes as of a large bird that snaps his
bill; then a long, half-melodious rumbling, intermingled with cacklings
and snaps, and at last, a sort of diminuendo movement of the same round,
pearly clucks. There was a whizzing of wing-beats in the air; two large
birds swept over their heads and struck down into the copse whence the
sound had issued.

"This is indeed a most singular thing," said Augusta, under her breath,
and with wide-eyed wonder. "Let us go nearer, and see what it can be."

"I am sure I can go if you can," responded Arnfinn, not any too eagerly.
"Give me your hand, and we can climb the better."

As they approached the pine copse, which projected like a promontory
from the line of the denser forest, the noise ceased, and only the
plaintive whistling of a mountain-hen, calling her scattered young
together, and now and then the shrill response of a snipe to the cry of
its lonely mate, fell upon the summer night, not as an interruption, but
as an outgrowth of the very silence. Augusta stole with soundless tread
through the transparent gloom which lingered under those huge black
crowns, and Arnfinn followed impatiently after. Suddenly