On the lake margin in the failing light it came to me as a sleepy drone of tiny bells, as if goblin sleighing parties were coursing gayly in the night on the white May snow of petals beneath the bird cherry trees. It and the dreamy trilling of the tree frogs were but a background for the voices of night birds that sounded now that those of the day birds had passed. High in air floated the nasal “peent, peent,” of whirling nighthawks. Out of the velvet dusk across the glimmering water I heard a bittern working his old-fashioned pump, wheezily. “Cahugunkagunk, cahugunkagunk,” he burbled, the weirdest bird voice of any that comes from marsh or mountain, yet in the peacefulness of the place sounding neither lonely nor uncouth. I fancy him, too, with his long beak pointed to the heights, worshiping the mountain peak in his own tongue. Whip-poor-wills mourned gently one to another across the water as a token that the night had really come and the last glow faded from the lone summit now so immeasurably withdrawn into the sky among the stars. A yellow-billed cuckoo called from the thicket, then, indignant at receiving no answer, sprung his rattle and waited. Roused out of his first slumber a white-throat gave a faint “tseep” of surprise, then trembled into music for a moment and went to sleep again. “Hap--pi--ness, hap-pi-ness, happiness,” he sang, the notes slipping away into infinite distance and blending with the perfect quiet of the night and the sky. It was the very spirit of the place speaking and reminding me again of the gentle writer who sang so clearly of the peace and beauty of the Chocorua woods and who now sleeps, after singing. INDEX A Achilles, 156, 157 Adam, 117 Alcott, 99, 100, 102 -- Louisa, 101 Alder, white, 68 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 30 Allen, Ethan, 171 Amesbury, 129 Anemone nemorosa, 143 Angle-wing, 56 Antietam, 193 Apple, Baldwin, 6 -- russet, 115 -- wild, 127 Appledore, 44, 46, 48, 49, 50, 52, 56, 59 Arbutus, trailing, 94, 138, 140, 141, 142, 146, 199 Arcady, 37 Argynnis, 67 -- cybele, 39 Asclepias cornuti, 37 -- tuberosa, 38 Assabet, 101 Asters, 37, 49, 86, 107, 113 Astræa, 150 Atlantis, 45 Azalea, 9 B Babylonian kings, 187 Bayberry, 9, 25, 46, 52, 81, 88 Bee, bumble, 25, 41 -- honey, 57 Beech, 21, 177, 200 “Bemis Place, the,” 35 Bilbao, 119 Billington, 139 -- sea, 139 Birch, 27, 69, 128, 200 -- black, 2 -- white, 21 -- yellow, 27, 171