e
street was deep under water, and fears were entertained for the new
bridge and the road to the beach. All night the gale continued, and all
the next day till late in the afternoon; and when the river should have
been at low tide, the island was still flooded. Gravitation was
overmatched for the time being. And where were the rails, I asked
myself. They could swim, no doubt, when put to it, but it seemed
impossible that they could survive so fierce an inundation. Well, the
wind ceased, the tide went out at last; and behold, the rails were in
full cry, not a voice missing! How they had managed it was beyond my
ken.

Another island, farther out than that of the rails (but the rails, like
the long-billed marsh wrens, appeared to be present in force all up and
down the river, in suitable places), was occupied nightly as a
crow-roost. Judged by the morning clamor, which, like that of the rails,
I heard from my bed, its population must have been enormous. One evening
I happened to come up the street just in time to see the hinder part of
the procession--some hundreds of birds--flying across the river. They
came from the direction of the pine lands in larger and smaller squads,
and with but a moderate amount of noise moved straight to their
destination. All but one of them so moved, that is to say. The
performance of that one exception was a mystery. He rose high in the
air, over the river, and remained soaring all by himself, acting
sometimes as if he were catching insects, till the flight had passed,
even to the last scattering detachments. What could be the meaning of
his eccentric behavior? Some momentary caprice had taken him, perhaps.
Or was he, as I could not help asking, some duly appointed officer of
the day,--grand marshal, if you please,--with a commission to see all
hands in before retiring himself? He waited, at any rate, till the final
stragglers had passed; then he came down out of the air and followed
them. I meant to watch the ingathering a second time, to see whether
this feature of it would be repeated, but I was never there at the right
moment. One cannot do everything.

Now, alas, Florida seems very far off. I am never likely to walk again
under those New Smyrna live-oaks, nor to see again all that beauty of
the Hillsborough. And yet, in a truer and better sense of the word, I do
see it, and shall. What a heavenly light falls at this moment on the
river and the island woods! Perhaps we must come back to