Meanwhile, nothing had been heard of the Tennessee, and it became evident that he had moved on. The customary water thrush was singing at short intervals; gayly dressed warblers darted in and out of the low evergreens, almost brushing my elbows, much to their surprise; and an olive-sided flycatcher kept up a persistent _pip-pip_. Something was troubling his equanimity; I had no idea what. It had been one of my special enjoyments, on this vacation trip, to renew my acquaintance with him and his humbler relative, the alder flycatcher,--the latter a commonplace body, whose emphatic _quay-quéer_ had now become one of the commonest of sounds. The olive-side, by the bye, for all his apparent wildness, did not disdain to visit the shade trees about the hotel; and once a catbird, not far off, amused me by whistling a most exact reproduction of his breezy _quit, quee-quée-o_. If the voice had come from a treetop instead of from the depths of a low thicket, the illusion would have been complete. It is the weakness of imitators, always and everywhere, to forget one thing or another. Still the bird I was waiting for made no sign, and finally I left the swamp and started up the road. Possibly he had gone in that direction, where I first saw him. No, he was not there, and, giving over the hunt, I turned back toward the village. Then, as I came opposite the barn again, I heard the notes in the old place, and hastened up the path. This time I was lucky, for there the bird sat on the outermost spray of a fir-tree branch. It was his most characteristic attitude. I can see him there now. As I quitted the swamp for good, a man in a buggy was coming down the road. I put on my coat, and as he overtook me I said, “I was putting on my coat because I felt sure you would invite me to ride.” He smiled, and bade me get in; and though he had been going only to the post office, he insisted upon carrying me to the hotel, a mile beyond. Better still, we had a pleasant, humanizing talk of a kind to be serviceable to a narrow specialist, such as I seemed just now in danger of becoming. The use of tobacco was one of our topics, I remember, and the mutual duties of husbands and wives another. My host had seen a good deal of the world, it appeared, and withal was no little of a philosopher. I hope it will not sound egotistical if I say that he gave every sign of finding me a capable listener.