It is a precious and solemn stillness that falls upon a man in these lofty woods. Across the narrow pass, as he looks through the branches, are the long, rugged upper slopes of Lafayette, torn with slides and gashed into deep ravines. Far over his head soar the trees, tall, branchless trunks pushing upward and upward, seeking the sun. In their leafy tops the wind murmurs, and here and there a bird is stirring. Now a chickadee lisps, or a nuthatch calls to his fellow. Out of the tangled, round-leaved hobble-bushes underneath an occasional robin may start with a quick note of surprise, or a flock of white-throats or snowbirds will fly up one by one to gaze at the intruder. In one place I hear the faint smooth-voiced signals of a group of Swainson thrushes and the chuck of a hermit. A few siskins (rarer than usual this year, it seems to me) pass overhead, sounding their curious, long-drawn whistle, as if they were blowing through a fine-toothed comb. Further up, I stand still at the tapping of a woodpecker just before me. Yes, there he is, on a dead spruce. A sapsucker, I call him at the first glance. But I raise my glass. No, it is not a sapsucker, but a bird of one of the three-toed species; a male, for I see his yellow crown-patch. His back is black. And now, of a sudden, a second one joins him. I am in great luck. This is a bird I have never seen before except once, and that many years ago on Mount Washington, in Tuckerman’s Ravine. The pair are gone too soon, and, patiently as I linger about the spot, I see no more of them. A pity they could not have broken silence. It is little we know of a bird or of a man till we hear him speak.