of the fish-hawk comes up from the pools.  A noisy kingfisher rattles about from tree to stump, like a restless busy-body.  The hum of insects fills the air with a drowsy murmur.  Now a deer steps daintily down the point, and looks, and listens, and drinks.  A great moose wades awkwardly out to plunge his head under and pull away at the lily roots.  But the young brood mind not these harmless things.  Sometimes indeed, as the afternoon wears away, they turn their little heads apprehensively as the alders crash and sway on the bank above; a low cluck from the mother bird sends them all off into the grass to hide.  How quickly they have disappeared, leaving never a trace!  But it is only a bear come down from the ridge where he has been sleeping, to find a dead fish perchance for his supper; and the little brood seem to laugh as another low cluck brings them scurrying back from their hiding places.

Once, perhaps, comes a real fright, when all their summer’s practice is put to the test.  An unusual noise is heard; and round the bend glides a bark canoe with sound of human voices.  Away go the brood together, the river behind them foaming like the wake of a tiny steamer as the swift-moving feet lift them almost out of water.  Visions of ocean, the guns, falling birds, and the hard winter distract the poor mother.  She flutters wildly about the brood, now leading, now bravely facing the monster; now pushing along some weak little loiterer, now floundering near the canoe as if wounded, to attract attention from the young.  But they double the point at last, and hide away under the alders.  The canoe glides by and makes no effort to find them.  Silence is again over the forest.  The little brood come back to the shallows, with mother bird fluttering round them to count again and again lest any be missing.  The kingfisher comes out of his hole in the bank.  The river flows on as before, and peace returns; and over all is the mystic charm of the wilderness and the quiet of a summer day.

This is the way it all looks and seems to me, sitting over under the big hemlock, out of sight, and watching the birds through my field-glass.

Day after day I have attended such little schools unseen and unsuspected by the mother bird.  Sometimes it was the a-b-c class, wee little downy fellows, learning to hide on a lily pad, and never getting a reward of merit in the shape of a young trout till they hid so well that the teacher (somewhat over-critical, I thought) was satisfied.  Sometimes it was the baccalaureates that displayed their talents to the unbidden visitor, flashing out of sight, cutting through the water like a ray of light, striking a young trout on the bottom with the rapidity and certainty almost of the teacher.  It was marvelous, the diving and swimming; and mother bird looked on and quacked her approval of the young graduates.—­That is another peculiarity:  the birds are dumb in winter; they find their voice only for the young.