Summer is past its height. The songless bobolink has forsaken the shorn meadow. Grain fields, save the battalioned maize, have fallen from gracefulness and beauty of bending heads and ripple of mimic waves to bristling acres of stubble. From the thriftless borders of ripening weeds busy flocks of yellowbirds in faded plumage scatter in sudden flight at one's approach like upblown flurries of dun leaves. Goldenrod gilds the fence-corners, asters shine in the dewy borders of the woods, sole survivors of the floral world save the persistent bloom of the wild carrot and succory--flourishing as if there had never been mower or reaper--and the white blossoms of the buckwheat crowning the filling kernels. The fervid days have grown preceptibly shorter, the lengthening nights have a chilly autumnal flavor, and in the cool dusk the katydids call and answer one to another out of their leafy tents, and the delicate green crickets that Yankee folks call August pipers play their monotonous tune. Above the katydid's strident cry and the piper's incessant notes, a wild tremulous whinny shivers through the gloom at intervals, now from a distant field or wood, now from the near orchard. One listener will tell you that it is only a little screech owl's voice, another that it is the raccoon's rallying cry to a raid on the cornfield. There is endless disputation concerning it and apparently no certainty, but the raccoon is wilder than the owl, and it is pleasanter to believe that it is his voice that you hear. The corn is in the milk; the feast is ready. The father and mother and well grown children, born and reared in the cavern of a ledge or hollow tree of a swamp, are hungry for sweets remembered or yet untasted, and they are gathering to it, stealing out of the thick darkness of the woods and along the brookside in single file, never stopping to dig a fiery wake-robin bulb nor to catch a frog nor harry a late brood of ground-nesting birds, but only to call some laggard, or distant clansfolk. So one fancies, when the quavering cry is repeated and when it ceases, that all the free-booters have gained the cornfield and are silent with busy looting. Next day's examination of the field may confirm the fancy with the sight of torn and trampled stalks and munched ears. These are the nights when the coon hunter is abroad and the robbers' revel is likely to be broken up in a wild panic. Hunted only at night, to follow the coon the boldest rider must dismount, yet he who risks neck and limbs, or melts or freezes for sport's sake, and deems no sport manly that has not a spice of danger or discomfort in it, must not despise this humble pastime for such reason.