. The trial to the woods. andbrown as they had been when the first snowflakefeU. No matter where you went, you always heardthe sound of running water. Maybe it was only aslight silver tinkle of a tiny rill slowly feeling its wayunderground to the more ambitious stream. Orperhaps it was the roaring of the brook, now swollento a turbulent, foaming river; but it was water,water ever)rwhere. A boy of some ten summers was standing in thedooryard of an old farmhouse, listening to the many-tongued whisper of spring. There was no oneparticular thing that conveyed this glad message tohis ears, only a v
. The trial to the woods. andbrown as they had been when the first snowflakefeU. No matter where you went, you always heardthe sound of running water. Maybe it was only aslight silver tinkle of a tiny rill slowly feeling its wayunderground to the more ambitious stream. Orperhaps it was the roaring of the brook, now swollento a turbulent, foaming river; but it was water,water ever)rwhere. A boy of some ten summers was standing in thedooryard of an old farmhouse, listening to the many-tongued whisper of spring. There was no oneparticular thing that conveyed this glad message tohis ears, only a vague undertone; or perhaps a beat-ing in the breast of Nature told him that spring hadcome. Perhaps it was the look of the clouds or thefeel of the wind, or maybe it was only the running 12 water, but the message had been understood, andthe heart of the boy was glad. Robins would behopping about in the mowing across the road in afew days, and the piping frog would peep in themeadows, at which sound the sugar buckets would. be gathered in, for every sugar-maker knows thatthis frog gives warning when the end of the sugarseason has clear and strong above the silver tinkle, 13 the tinkle of running water underground, and thewhisper of the dank mold, and the sighing of thewind in the leafless branches, the boy heard anothernote that thrilled him with a strange sense of thenew life that was coming, coming with silent, resist-less force. It was a hoarse, glad cry from the swampy land bythe brookside; not a peep nor a pipe, but a cry. Somuch like that of the night hawk, as he sweepsthrough the summer sky on spotted wings, that Idefy even a woodsman to distinguish the two notes,were it not for the season. The night hawk wouldnot scour the upper air for flies and millers for threemonths to come, so of course it was not that strangebird. But how like his note the cry from the pastureland! Then a small, birdlike speck arose near the brookand went circling up into the sky until it
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookidcu3192, booksubjectanimals
