The faraway surge of the sea came up faintly till the
spruces answered it, and both sounds went gossiping over the
hills together. On all sides were the woods, which, on the north
especially, stretched away over a broken country beyond my
farthest explorations.
Over against my tenting place a colony of herons had their nests
in some dark hemlocks. They were interesting as a camp of
gypsies, some going off in straggling bands to the coast at
daybreak, others frogging in the streams, and a few solitary,
patient, philosophical ones joining me daily in following the
gentle art of Izaak Walton. And then, when the sunset came and
the deep red glowed just behind the hemlocks, and the gypsy bands
came home, I would see their sentinels posted here and there
among the hemlock tips--still, dark, graceful silhouettes etched
in sepia against the gorgeous after-glow--and hear the mothers
croaking their ungainly babies to sleep in the tree tops.
Down at one end of the pond a brood of young black ducks were
learning their daily lessons in hiding; at the other end a noisy
kingfisher, an honest blue heron, and a thieving mink shared the
pools and watched each other as rival fishermen. Hares by night,
and squirrels by day, and wood mice at all seasons played round
my tent, or came shyly to taste my bounty.
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