day the breeze was talking of grand and simple things in the pines
that look across the lower bay at Sandy Hook. The great water spaces
were a delicious blue, dotted with the white tops of crushed waves; to
the left, Coney Island lay mapped out in bleached surfaces, while
beyond and seaward, from the purple sleeve formed by the hills of the
Navesink, the Hook ran a brown finger eastward. A hawk which nests
among the steep inclines of Todt Hill shot out from a neighboring
ravine and hung motionless, but never quiet, in the middle distance.

Birds and beasts will make closer approach to a person clothed in
dun-colored garments; therefore it was not odd that the hawk should
not notice my presence on the pine needles near the crest of the
hill. After steering without visible rustle of a feather through the
lake of air before me, he stooped all at once, grasped a hedge-sparrow
that had been shaking the top of a bush far down the slope, and,
rising, bore it to the low branch of a pine not far from my
resting-place.

The sun had fallen in a Titanic tragedy of color beyond Prince's Bay.
The fierce bird, leisurely occupied in tearing to pieces the little
twitterer, was a suitable accompaniment to the bloody drama in the
clouds. Watching keenly, I gradually began to picture to myself the
sensation of walking unseen to the murderous fowl and suddenly
clasping his smooth back with both hands. How startled he would be!
But in truth the thought was only a continuation of another that
had been floating through my mind while the hawk was wheeling.
Unconsciously I had been mumbling to myself from the Nibelungen,--

"About the tameless dwarf-kin I have heard it said,
They dwell in hollow mountains; for safety are arrayed
In what is termed a tarn-kap, of wondrous quality;
Who hath it on his body preserved is said to be
From cuttings and from thrustings; of him is none aware
When he therein is clothed. Both see can he, and hear
According as he wishes, yet no one him perceives."

The magic cloak, the tarn-kap, I reasoned, with my eyes on the
cruel bird, was only a symbol after all, something physical to
make real that invisibility which we cannot readily conceive. But
suddenly--could my wish have been felt?--the hawk gave a hoarse croak
of fright, dropped his prey, and, springing heavily into the air, was
gone.

He had not looked at me, he had not seen or heard me, nor could I see,
far or near, the