til almost over me, when something happened. The gander in the lead
faltered and swerved, the wedge lines wavered, the flock rushed together
in confusion, wheeled, dropped, then broke apart, and honking wildly,
turned back toward the bay.

It was instant and complete demoralization. A stronger gander, I think,
could have led the wedge unbroken over the city to some neighboring pond,
where the weakest of the stragglers, however, must have fallen from sheer
exhaustion.

Scaling lower and lower across the roofs, the flock had reached the
center of the city and had driven suddenly into the roar and confusion of
the streets. Weary from the heat, they were dismayed at the noise, their
leader faltered, and, at a stroke, the great flying wedge went to pieces.

There is nothing in the life of birds quite so stirring to the imagination
as their migration: the sight of gathering swallows, the sudden appearance
of strange warblers, the call of passing plovers--all are suggestive of
instincts, movements, and highways that are unseen, unaccountable, and
full of mystery. Little wonder that the most thrilling poem ever written
to a bird begins:

Whither, midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?

The question, the mystery in that "certain flight" I never felt so vividly
as from my roof. Here I have often heard the reed-birds and the water-fowl
passing. Sometimes I have heard them going over in the dark. One night I
remember particularly, the sky and the air were so clear and the geese so
high in the blue.

Over the fields and wide silent marshes such passing is strange enough.
But here I stood above a sleeping city of men, and far above me, so far
that I could only hear them, holding their northward way through the
starlit sky, they passed--whither? and how guided? Was the shining dome of
the State House a beacon? Did they mark the light at Marblehead?

THE HUNTING OF THE WOODCHUCK

[Illustration]

THE HUNTING OF THE WOODCHUCK

... the chylde may Rue that ys vn-born, it wos the mor pitte.

There was murder in my heart. The woodchuck knew it. He never had had a
thought before, but he had one now. It came hard and heavily, yet it
arrived in time; and it was not a slow thought for a woodchuck,
either--just a trifle better, indeed, than my own.

This was the first time I had caught the wo