Moreover, this gentlest of sportsmen is hampered by no restrictions of close time, nor confronted by penalties of trespass. All seasons are open for his bloodless forays, all woods and waters free to his harmless weapon. Neither is he trammeled by any nice distinctions as to what may or may not be considered game. Everything counts in his score. The eagle on his craggy perch, the high-hole on his hollow tree, are as legitimate game for him as the deer and grouse. All things beautiful and wild and picturesque are his, yet he kills them not, but makes them a living and enduring joy, to himself and all who behold them. XXI JULY DAYS The woods are dense with full-grown leafage. Of all the trees, only the basswood has delayed its blossoming, to crown the height of summer and fill the sun-steeped air with a perfume that calls all the wild bees from hollow tree and scant woodside gleaning to a wealth of honey gathering, and all the hive-dwellers from their board-built homes to a finer and sweeter pillage than is offered by the odorous white sea of buckwheat. Half the flowers of wood and fields are out of bloom. Herdsgrass, clover and daisy are falling before the mower. The early grain fields have already caught the color of the sun, and the tasseling corn rustles its broad leaves above the rich loam that the woodcock delights to bore. The dwindling streams have lost their boisterous clamor of springtide and wimple with subdued voices over beds too shallow to hide a minnow or his poised shadow on the sunlit shallows. The sharp eye of the angler probes the green depths of the slowly swirling pools, and discovers the secrets of the big fish which congregate therein. The river has marked the stages of its decreasing volume with many lines along its steep banks. It discloses the muskrat's doorway, to which he once dived so gracefully, but now must clumsily climb to. Rafts of driftwood bridge the shallow current sunk so low that the lithe willows bend in vain to kiss its warm bosom. This only the swaying trails of water-weeds and rustling sedges toy with now; and swift-winged swallows coyly touch. There is not depth to hide the scurrying schools of minnows, the half of whom fly into the air in a curving burst of silver shower before the rush of a pickerel, whose green and mottled sides gleam like a swift-shot arrow in the downright sunbeams. The sandpiper tilts along the shelving shore. Out of an embowered harbor a wood duck convoys her fleet of ducklings, and on the ripples of their wake the anchored argosies of the water lilies toss and cast adrift their cargoes of perfume. Above them the green heron perches on an overhanging branch, uncouth but alert, whether sentinel or scout, flapping his awkward way along the ambient bends and reaches. With slow wing-beats he signals the coming of some more lazily moving boat, that drifts at the languid will of the current or indolent pull of oars that grate on the golden-meshed sand and pebbles.