Page:The clerk of the woods.djvu/264

246 time they are unusually faint, and are lost almost immediately. Only for my acquaintance with the matter I should assume that the bird had flown away, and that my evening was lost. As it is, I continue to listen. Once and again I catch the sounds. The fellow is still rising. I can see him, but only in my mind's eye. Those black clouds hide him quite as effectually as if he were behind them. Still I can see him. I know he has gone up in a broad spiral—up, up, up, as on a winding staircase.

Now, after silence, begins a different sound, more musical, more clearly vocal; breathless, broken, eager, passionate, ecstatic. And now, far aloft in the sky, where the clouds are of a lighter color, I suddenly catch sight of the bird, a dark speck, shooting this way and that, descending in sharp zigzags, whistling with his last gasps. And now, as if exhausted,—and well he may be,—he drops to earth (I see him come down) very near me, much nearer than I had thought.

Spneak, he calls. I know exactly what is coming. At intervals, just as before, he repeats the sound, till suddenly he is on the