uld find my rare singer. Hours
passed, the shadows grew long, and sadly and slowly I took my way
homewards, wishing I had a charm against fatigue, mosquitoes, and other
terrors of the night, and could stay out till he came.

All through the month of June I haunted that wood, seeking the unknown.
Every evening I heard him, but no sight came to gladden my eyes. I grew
almost to believe it merely "a wandering voice," and I went home with my
longing unsatisfied.

When next the month of roses came around, I betook myself to a spur of
the Hoosac Mountains to see my birds. The evening of my arrival, as the
twilight gathered, rose the call of my witching voice.

"What bird is that?" I demanded, with the usual result; no one knew. (A
chapter might be written on the ignorance of country people of their
own birds and plants. A chapter, did I say? A book, a dozen books, the
country is full of material.)

"I shall find that bird," I said, "if I stay a year." In the morning I
set out. The song had come from the belt of trees that hang lovingly
over a little stream on its merry way down the mountain, and thither I
turned my steps. Now, my hostess had a drove of twenty cows, wild,
head-tossing creatures,--"Holsteins" they were,--and having half a dozen
pastures, they were changed about from day to day. Driving them every
morning was almost as exciting as the stampede of a drove of horses, and
it seemed as if they could never reconcile themselves to the
idiosyncrasies of the American woman. The pasture where they were shut
for the day was as sacred from my foot as if it were filled with mad
dogs. My mere appearance near the fence was a signal for a headlong race
to the spot to see what on earth I was doing now.

I went into the field, looking cautiously about, and satisfying myself
that the too curious foreigners were not within sight, found a
comfortable seat on a bank overlooking the whole beautiful view of the
brook and its waving green borders, and commanding the approach to my
side of the field.

This time again my mysterious singer proved to be among the "later"
ones, and after spending an hour or two there, I rose to go back, when
in passing a thick-growing evergreen tree, I saw that I had created a
panic. There was a flutter of wings, there were cries, and on the tree,
in plain sight, the towhee bunting and his brown-clad spouse. Of course
there must be some reason for this reckless display; I sought the cause,
and found