g woods, waiting for
a pool to grow quiet, out of which I had just taken a trout and in which
I suspected there was a larger one hiding. As I waited a mother-grouse
and her brood--one of the old beech partridge's numerous families for
whom he provided nothing--came gliding along the edge of the woods. They
had come to drink, evidently, but not from the brook. A sweeter draught
than that was waiting for their coming. The dew was still clinging to
the grass blades; here and there a drop hung from a leaf point, flashing
like a diamond in the early light. And the little partridges, cheeping,
gliding, whistling among the drooping stems, would raise their little
bills for each shining dewdrop that attracted them, and drink it down
and run with glad little pipings and gurglings to the next drop that
flashed an invitation from its bending grass blade. The old mother
walked sedately in the midst of them, now fussing over a laggard, now
clucking them all together in an eager, chirping, jumping little crowd,
each one struggling to be first in at the death of a fat slug she had
discovered on the underside of a leaf; and anon reaching herself for a
dewdrop that hung too high for their drinking. So they passed by within
a few yards, a shy, wild, happy little family, and disappeared into the
shadow of the big woods.

Perhaps that is why I never saw the old beech partridge drink from the
brook. Nature has a fresher draught, of her own distilling, that is more
to his tasting.

Earlier in the season I found another of his families near the same
spot. I was stealing along a wood road when I ran plump upon them,
scratching away at an ant hill in a sunny open spot. There was a wild
flurry, as if a whirlwind had struck the ant hill; but it was only the
wind of the mother bird's wings, whirling up the dust to blind my eyes
and to hide the scampering retreat of her downy brood. Again her wings
beat the ground, sending up a flurry of dead leaves, in the midst of
which the little partridges jumped and scurried away, so much like the
leaves that no eye could separate them. Then the leaves settled slowly
and the brood was gone, as if the ground had swallowed them up; while
Mother Grouse went fluttering along just out of my reach, trailing a
wing as if broken, falling prone on the ground, clucking and kwitting
and whirling the leaves to draw my attention and bring me away from
where the little ones were hiding.

I knelt down just within the edge