n had gone down behind the mountains
across the lake, and I was listening for the whippoorwill who lived at
the edge of the wood to take up the burden of song and carry it into the
night.

Suddenly there burst upon the silence a song that startled me. It was
loud and distinct as if very near, yet it had the spirit and the echoes
of the woods in it; a wild, rare, thrilling strain, the woods themselves
made vocal. Such it seemed to me. I was strangely moved, and filled from
that moment with an undying determination to trace that witching song to
the bird that could utter it.

"I'm going to seek my singer," was the message I flung back next
morning, as, opera-glass in hand, I started down the orchard towards the
woods. I followed the path under the apple-trees, passed the daisy
field, white from fence to fence with beauty,--despair of the farmer,
but delight of the cottagers,--hurried across the pasture beyond,
skirting the little knoll on which the cow happened this morning to be
feeding, crossed the brook on a plank, and reached my daily walk.

This was a broad path that ran for half a mile on the edge of the lake.
Behind it, penetrated every now and then by a foot-path, was the bit of
old woods that the clearers of this land had the grace to leave, to
charm the eye and refresh the soul (though probably not for that
reason). Before it stretched the clear, sparkling waters of Lake George,
and on the other side rose abruptly one of the beautiful mountains that
fringe that exquisite piece of water.

Usually I passed half the morning here, seated on one of the rocks that
cropped out everywhere, filling my memory with pictures to take home
with me. But to-day I could not stay. I entered one of the paths, passed
into the grand, silent woods, found a comfortable seat on a bed of pine
needles, with the trunk of a tall maple tree for a back, and prepared
to wait. I would test Thoreau's assertion that if one will sit long
enough in some attractive spot in the woods, sooner or later every
inhabitant of it will pass before him. I had confidence in Thoreau's
woodcraft, for has not Emerson said:--

"What others did at distance hear,
And guessed within the thicket's gloom,
Was shown to this philosopher,
And at his bidding seemed to come"?

and I resolved to sit there till I should see my bird. I was confident I
should know him: a wild, fearless eye, I was sure, a noble bearing, a
dweller on the tree-tops.

Alas! I