came down to the very back steps of the house.

[Sidenote: _FROM THE WINDOW._]

On the evening when my story begins, early in June, I was sitting, as I
said, at my window, listening to the good-night songs of the earlier
birds, enjoying the view of woods and mountains, and waiting till tea
should be over before taking my usual evening walk. I had fallen into a
reverie, when I was aroused by the sound of wheels, and in a moment a
horse appeared, trotting rapidly up the little hill. In his wake was a
face. There was of course a body also, and some sort of a vehicle, but
neither of them did I see; only a pair of eager, questioning eyes, and
an intelligent countenance framed in snow-white curls which streamed
back upon the wind,--a picture, a vision, I shall never forget.

I recognized at once my Enthusiast, a dear friend and fellow bird-lover,
who I knew was coming to spend some weeks in the village. I rushed to
the door to greet her.

"I'm delighted to see you!" she cried, as we clasped hands across the
wheels. "I arrived an hour or two ago, and now I want to go where I can
hear a hermit thrush. I've come all the way from Chicago to hear that
bird."

She dismounted, declined the invitation to tea given by my hostess, who
stood speechless with amazement at the erratic taste that would forego
tea for the sake of a bird song, and we started at once up the road,
where I had seen the bird perched in a partially dead hemlock-tree, and
heard

"his ravishing carol ring
From the topmost twig he made his throne."

Everything was perfectly still. Not a bird peeped. Even the tireless
vireo, who peopled the woods as the English sparrow the city streets,
was hushed. I began to be anxious; could it be too cool for song? or too
late? We walked steadily on, up the beautiful winding road: on one side
dense forest, on the other lovely changing views of the hills across the
intervale, blue now with approaching night. Crows called as they hurried
over; the little sandpiper's "ah weet! weet! weet!" came up from the
river bank, but in the woods all was silent.

Still we went on, climbing the steep hills, loitering through the
valleys, till suddenly a bird note broke the stillness, quite near us, a
low, yearning "wee-o!"

[Sidenote: _THE WONDERFUL SONG._]

"The veery!" I whispered.

"Is that the veery?" she exclaimed. (She had come from the home of the
wood thrush, where hermit and veery were unknown.)

"Yes," I