welcome to the wilderness.

Simmo had heard too. He was on his hands and knees, just his dark face
peering by the corner stake of his _commoosie_, so as to see better
the little singer on my tent.--"Have better weather and better luck
now. Killooleet sing on ridgepole," he said confidently. Then we
spread some cracker crumbs for the guest and turned in to sleep till
better times.

That was the beginning of a long acquaintance. It was also the first
of many social calls from a whole colony of white-throats (Tom-Peabody
birds) that lived on the mountain-side just behind my tent, and that
came one by one to sing to us, and to get acquainted, and to share our
crumbs. Sometimes, too, in rainy weather, when the woods seemed wetter
than the lake, and Simmo would be sleeping philosophically, and I
reading, or tying trout flies in the tent, I would hear a gentle stir
and a rustle or two just outside, under the tent fly. Then, if I crept
out quietly, I would find Killooleet exploring my goods to find where
the crackers grew, or just resting contentedly under the fly where it
was dry and comfortable.

It was good to live there among them, with the mountain at our backs
and the lake at our feet, and peace breathing in every breeze or
brooding silently over the place at twilight. Rain or shine, day or
night, these white-throated sparrows are the sunniest, cheeriest folk
to be found anywhere in the woods. I grew to understand and love the
Milicete name, Killooleet, Little Sweet-Voice, for its expressiveness.
"Hour-Bird" the Micmacs call him; for they say he sings every hour,
and so tells the time, "all same's one white man's watch." And indeed
there is rarely an hour, day or night, in the northern woods when you
cannot hear Killooleet singing. Other birds grow silent after they
have won their mates, or they grow fat and lazy as summer advances, or
absorbed in the care of their young, and have no time nor thought for
singing. But not so Killooleet. He is kinder to his mate after he has
won her, and never lets selfishness or the summer steal away his
music; for he knows that the woods are brighter for his singing.

Sometimes, at night, I would, take a brand from the fire, and follow a
deer path that wound about the mountain, or steal away into a dark
thicket and strike a parlor match. As the flame shot up, lighting its
little circle of waiting leaves, there would be a stir beside me in
the underbrush, or overhead in the fir; then t