on a dream. The
light that poured down from the round, gold-white, high-sailing moon
was not ordinary moonlight, but that liquid enchantment which the
sorceress of the heavens sheds at times, and notably at the ripe of
the summer, lest earth should forget the incomprehensibility of
beauty. A little to one side, beyond the corn-field and over a billowy
mass of silvered leafage, stood the gray, clustered roofs of a
backwoods farmstead.

In the top of a tall, slim poplar, leaning out from the edge of the
woods and over the fence that marked the bounds of the wilderness,
clung a queer-looking, roundish object, gently swaying in the magic
light. It might almost have been mistaken for a huge, bristly
bird's-nest, but for the squeaky grunts of satisfaction which it kept
emitting at intervals. Whether it was that the magic of the moonlight
had got into its blood, driving it to strange pastimes, or that it was
merely indulging an established taste for the game of "Rock-a-bye-baby,"
observation made it plain that the porcupine was amusing itself by
swinging in the tree-top. Any other of the woods folk would have chosen
for their recreation a less conspicuous spot than this poplar-top thrust
out over the open field. But the porcupine feared nobody, and was quite
untroubled by bashfulness. He cared not a jot who heard, saw, or derided
him. It was a pleasant world; and for all that had ever been shown him
to the contrary, it belonged to him.

After a time he got tired of swinging and squeaking. He straightened
himself out, slowly descended the tree, and set off along the top of
the fence toward the farmyard. Never before had it occurred to him to
visit the farmyard; but now that the moon had put the madness into his
head, he acted upon the whim without a moment's misgiving. Unlike the
rest of the wild kindreds, he stood little in awe of either the works
or the ways of man.

[Illustration: "SET OFF ALONG THE TOP OF THE FENCE."]

Presently the fence turned off at a sharp angle to the way he had
chosen to go. He descended, and crawled in leisurely fashion along an
unused, grassy lane, wandering from side to side as he went, as if
time were of no concern to him. About a hundred feet from the fence he
came to a brook crossing the lane. Spring freshets had carried away
the little bridge, doubtless years before, and now the stream was
spanned by nothing but an old tree-trunk, carelessly thrown across.
Upon the end of this,--for him an