"So do I!" Nixon stooped over the tall bristly flower-heads, rusty green in color, and gathered a few of the two-pronged seed-vessels that cling so readily to the fur of an animal or the clothing of a boy. "It's funny to think how they have to depend upon some passing animal to propagate the seeds. Say! but they do stick tight, don't they?" And he slyly slipped a few of the russet pitchforks inside Leon's collar--whereupon a whooping scuffle ensued. "It looks to me as if _some_ lightfooted animal were in the habit of passing here that might carry the seeds along," said the perpetrator of the prank presently, dropping upon his hands and knees to examine breathlessly the leaves and brambles pressed down into a trail so light that it seemed the mere shadow of a pathway leading off into the woods at right angles from where the boys stood. "You're right. It's a fox-path!" Leon was examining the shadow-tracks too. "A fox trots along here to his hunting-ground where he catches shrews an' mice or grasshoppers even, when he can't get hold of a plump quail or partridge. Whew! I wish I'd brought my gun." Dead silence for two minutes, while each ear was intently strained to catch the sound of a sly footfall and heard nothing but the noisy shrilling of the cicada, or seventeen-year locust, with the pipe of kindred insects. "Look! there's been a partridge at work here," cried Nixon by and by, when the still game was over and the boys were forging ahead again. He pointed to a decayed log whose flaky wood, garnished here and there with a tiny buff feather, was mostly pecked away and reduced to brown powder by the busy bird which had wallowed there. "He's been trying to get at some insects in the wood. See how he has dusted it all up with his claws an' feathers!" went on the excited speaker. "Oh--but I tell you what makes you feel happy!" He drew a long breath, turning suddenly, impulsively, to the boys behind him. "It's when you're out on a hike an' a partridge rises right in front of you--and you hear his wings sing!" Colin and Coombsie stared. The strange boy's look flashed with such frank gladness, doubled and trebled by sharing sympathetically, in so far as he could, each bounding thrill that animated the wild, free life about him! They had often been moved by the liquid notes from a songster's throat, but had not come enough into loving touch with Nature to hear music in a bird's wings. If Leon had heard it, his one idea would have been to silence it with a shot. He stood still in his tracks, bristling like his dog. "Ughr-r! 'Singing wings'!" he sneered. "Aw! take that talk home to Mamma." "Say that once again, and I'll lick you!" The stranger's gaze became, now, very straight and inviting from under his broad-brimmed hat.