"What a glorious man your friend
must be!"
"Because the snipes and the wild ducks like him?
You seem to have greater confidence in their judgment
than in mine."
"Of course I have--at least as long as you
persist in joking. But, jesting aside, what a
wondrously beautiful life he must lead whom
Nature takes thus into her confidence; who has,
as it were, an inner and subtler sense, corresponding
to each grosser and external one; who is
keen-sighted enough to read the character of
every individual beast, and has ears sensitive to
the full pathos of joy or sorrow in the song of
the birds that inhabit our woodlands."
"Whether he has any such second set of
senses as you speak of, I don't know; but there
can be no doubt that his familiarity, not to say
intimacy, with birds and beasts gives him a
great advantage as a naturalist. I suppose you
know that his little book has been translated
into French, and rewarded with the gold medal
of the Academy."
"Hush! What is that?" Augusta sprang
up, and held her hand to her ear.
"Some love-lorn mountain-cock playing yonder
in the pine copse," suggested Arnfinn,
amused at his cousin's eagerness.
"You silly boy! Don't you know the mountain-
cock never plays except at sunrise?"
"He would have a sorry time of it now, then,
when there IS no sunrise."
"And so he has; he does not play except in
early spring."
The noise, at first faint, now grew louder. It
began with a series of mellow, plaintive clucks
that followed thickly one upon another, like
smooth pearls of sound that rolled through the
throat in a continuous current; then came a few
sharp notes as of a large bird that snaps his
bill; then a long, half-melodious rumbling,
intermingled with cacklings and snaps, and at last,
a sort of diminuendo movement of the same
round, pearly clucks.
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