By SAMUEL SCOVILLE, Jr. AUTHOR OF “EVERYDAY ADVENTURES” With Illustrations by CHARLES LIVINGSTON BULL AND CARTON MOOREPARK The ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS BOSTON Copyright, 1922, by Samuel Scoville, Jr. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA To my Son Gurdon Trumbull Scoville who has learned to know and love so many of our Lesser Brethren of Earth and Air and Water this book is dedicated...

All winter long the Barrens had slept still and white. Rows and regiments of low pitch-pine trees, whose blue-green needles grow in threes instead of the fives of the white or the twos of the Virginia pines, marched for miles and miles across the drifted snow. Through their tops forever sounded the far-away roar of the surf of the upper air, like the rushing of mighty wings, while overhead hung a sky whose cold blue seemed flecked with frost. The air tingled with the spicery of myriads of pine t

It was the high-water slack of summer. Up on Seven Mountains the woods were waves of deep lush green; and in the hot September sunshine the birds sang again, now that the moulting-moon of August had set. Yet there was an expectancy in the soft air. Shrill, sweet insect-notes, unheard before, multiplied. When the trees and the grass were all dappled with patches of dark and moonshine, the still air throbbed with the pulsing notes of the white tree-crickets; while above their range the high lilt o

In a far northwestern corner of Connecticut, the twenty-one named hills of Cornwall slept deep under the snow. At the north lay the Barrack, a lonely coffin-shaped hill, where, in the deep woods on the top, lived old Rashe Howe and his wife, snowbound from December until March. Never since the day that he journeyed to New York to hear Jenny Lind sing, a half-century ago, had she spoken to him. Two miles beyond, Myron Prindle and Mrs. Prindle lived on the bare top of Prindle Hill, where in summer

“Clang! Clang! Clang!”—the sound drifted down from mid-sky, as if the ice-cold gates of winter were opening. A gaggle of Canada geese, wearing white bibs below their black heads and necks, came beating down the wind, shouting to earth as they flew. Below them, although it was still fall, the tan-colored marsh showed ash-gray stretches of new ice, with here and there blue patches of snow. Suddenly, faint and far sounded other notes, as of a distant horn, and a company of misty-white trumpeter swa

The swamp-maples showed rose-red and gold-green in the warm sunlight, and the woods were etched lavender-brown against a heliotrope sky. The bluebird, with the sky-color on his back and the red-brown of earth at his breast, called, “Far-away! far-away! far-away!” in his soft sweet contralto. From a wet meadow a company of rusty blackbirds, with short tails and white eyes, sang together like a flock of creaking wheelbarrows, with single split notes sounding constantly above the squealing chorus.

Deacon Jimmy Wadsworth was probably the most upright man in Cornwall. It was he who drove five miles one bitter winter night and woke up Silas Smith, who kept the store at Cornwall Bridge, to give him back three cents over-change. Silas’s language, as he went back to bed, almost brought on a thaw. The Deacon lived on the tiptop of the Cobble, one of the twenty-seven named hills of Cornwall, with Aunt Maria his wife, Hen Root his hired man, Nip Root his yellow dog and—the Ducks. The Deacon had ru

Above the afterglow gleamed a patch of beryl-green. Etched against the color was the faintest, finest, and newest of crescent moons. It seemed almost as if a puff of wind would blow it, like a cobweb, out of the sky. As the shifting tints deepened into the unvarying peacock-blue of a Northern night, the evening star flared like a lamp hung low in the west while the dark strode across the shadows of the forest, cobalt-blue against the drifted snow. As the winter stars flamed into the darkening sk

For three long months the blue-white snow had lain over the gold-white sand among the dark-green pitch pines standing like trees from a Noah’s Ark. To-day the woods were a vast sea of green, lapping at the white sand-land that had been thrust up, a wedge from the South, into the very heart of the North. A crooked stream had cut its course deep through the forest. On its high bank the ghost-like glory of a mountain laurel overhung the dark water. Close to the water’s edge were clumps of the hollo

After running twenty miles, old Raven Road stopped to rest under a vast black-oak tree. Beyond its sentinel bulk was Wild-Folk Land. Where hidden springs had kept the wet grass green all winter, the first flower of the year had forced its way through the cold ground. Smooth as ivory, all crimson-lake and gold-green on the outside, the curved hollow showed a rich crimson within. Cursed with an ill name and an evil savor, yet the skunk cabbage leads the year’s procession of flowers. Among the dry

The short Arctic summer had flung its flower fields among the glaciers of the Siberian coast, like many-colored jewels set in crystal. Flocks of skuas, jaegers, and little auks circled and screamed above the smoky green waters of the Straits; and far out from shore a bed of kelp writhed and tossed like a mass of golden-brown sea snakes. There, cradled on the swaying stems, a water-baby was born. He had a funny little nose, with a padded cushion on top which made it look like the ace of spades, a