"To be sure, sonny, to be sure; they come from the clouds." "Oh, thunder!" "Yes; from the clouds, or maybe higher. I s'pose you yeard of the people of Israel and how they were fed in the wilderness with manna and quail. Where d'you expect those birds came from? Frogs! No; they just dropped from the sky, and they've kep' on droppin' ever since in the spring." "Go along! There's no people wandering in the wilderness in these days." "I seed 'em." "The Israelites?" "No; the quail a-falling out the roof of the world. I'll tell you how it came about that I diskivered this secret that's been kep' locked up all these hundreds of years. I'd been a-fishin' off the great rock that stands out of the breakers over there yonder by the Kasouga, an' the spring tide, rolling in with a great heave, made a boilin' foam 'twixt me an' the beach. I were fixed there for the night, sure enough; an' I tell you what, sonny, when a man is brought face to face in the black of the night with the leaping sea, he don't forget the time. Noise! by gum! You know what it is to be waked all of a sudden out of a sleep a full mile from the sea by the smacking crash of a great wave, and there I was in the very thick of the thunderation, with the big black breakers swishing out of the dark like a movin' wall, and jus' leapin' agin the rock as though they were bent on sweeping it away. The white foam went flying above, drenching me through and through--and it grew so slippery up above on that table size top, that I was obliged to lay full stretched on my back with my heels agin a crack, and my arms outstretched--and my eyes fixed on the stars above whenever I could see them through the flying scud. Even a spring tide turns--and in the darkness before the early morning I could feel the rock under me growing firmer. I was just thinking o' getting to the shore to dry myself in the white sand when I yeard a queer sound from the sky. There's just one thing wanting to this yer quail." "What's that?" "Just a dash of Dop brandy." I passed him over the stone demijohn, and we listened to the cluck of the liquor as it poured into the tin komeky. "Yes; out of the black of the sky there came a sort of sound that goes before a storm; and, boys, it licks me how such a shadder of a noise can come on in advance." "It's the way with shadows," said Amos, drily.