Early the next morning, as I lay in bed, there sounded a strange song. It seemed to come from a tree at the other end of the house and possessed a peculiar rippling, gurgling timbre. A minute or so later my new acquaintance rushed in and seemed much pained that I did not know the singer. Thereafter my life was burdened by that song. Occasionally it sounded in the early morning, when I wanted to sleep but was awakened by my enthusiastic disciple. Another time I would hear it in the evening. One day it would come from the house, and again from the edge of the woods. Yet, skulk and peer and listen as I would, I could never locate the singer or identify the song. The revelation came one Sunday morning, as two of us were breakfasting on the terrace close to the house. Suddenly that vile song began. It seemed to come from near the top of a tree by the farther end of the house. I rushed to the place, my napkin flapping as I ran. By the time I reached the tree, the song came from the opposite side of the house. Back I hastened, only to find that the bird had once more flitted to the other side. I hurried there, but again that bird was gone, and a moment later sang from the farthest end of the house. Three separate times I circled the place, with the singer and the song always just ahead of me. It was only when I noticed that my companion at breakfast had fallen forward on the table overcome by emotion, that I began to suspect the worse. I hid behind a tree and waited. A moment later I saw the alleged bird-enthusiast, clothed in preposterous pink pajamas, and blowing false and fluting notes on a tin bird-whistle, the silly kind that children fill with water and blow through. I have not yet been able to live down that bird-song. * * * * * When I was a boy, there were four of us who always hunted and fished and tramped and explored together. We never supposed that anything could separate us. Yet the years have blown us apart, and we go adventuring together no more. Alone of that quartette I am left to follow the trail that seemed in those days to have no ending. The same years, however, have made me some amends. Once again there are four of us who spend all our holidays in the open. We collect orchids and bird-songs, and find new birds and nests, and quest far among the wild-folk in our search for secrets and adventures. Sometimes we go south, and become acquainted with blue-gray gnatcatchers and prothonotary warblers and summer tanagers and mocking-birds and blue grosbeaks, and other birds which we never see here. Sometimes we explore lonely islands hidden in a maze of sand-bars, and discover where the terns and the laughing gulls nest; or we find wonderful things waiting for us on mountain-tops or hidden among morasses and quaking bogs.