“I must,” she said with forced restraint. “It is the price of life. Without it one suffers----horribly----as I know. What other plants do you gather?” “Saffron,” answered the Harvester. “A beautiful thing! You must see it. Tall, round stems, lacy, delicate leaves, big heads of bright yellow bloom, touched with colour so dark it appears black--one of the loveliest plants that grows. You should see my big bed of it in a week or two more. It makes a picture.” The words recalled him to the Girl. He turned to study her. He forgot his commission and chafed at conventions that prevented his doing what he saw was required so urgently. Fearing she would notice, he gazed away through the forest and tried to think, to plan. “You are not making noise enough,” she said. So absorbed was the Harvester he scarcely heard her. In an attempt to obey he began to whistle softly. A tiny goldfinch in a nest of thistle down and plant fibre in the branching of a bush ten feet above him stuck her head over the brim and inquired, “P'tseet?” “Pt'see!” answer the Harvester. That began the duet. Before the question had been asked and answered a half dozen times a catbird intruded its voice and hearing a reply came through the bushes to investigate. A wren followed and became very saucy. From----one could not see where, came a vireo, and almost at the same time a chewink had something to say. Instantly the Harvester answered. Then a blue jay came chattering to ascertain what all the fuss was about, and the Harvester carried on a conversation that called up the remainder of the feathered tribe. A brilliant cardinal came tearing through the thicket, his beady black eyes snapping, and demanded to know if any one were harming his mate, brooding under a wild grape leaf in a scrub elm on the river embankment. A brown thrush silently slipped like a snake between shrubs and trees, and catching the universal excitement, began to flirt his tail and utter a weird, whistling cry. With one eye on the bird, and the other on the Girl sitting in amazed silence, the Harvester began working for effect. He lay quietly, but in turn he answered a dozen birds so accurately they thought their mates were calling, and closer and closer they came. An oriole in orange and black heard his challenge, and flew up the river bank, answering at steady intervals for quite a time before it was visible, and in resorting to the last notes he could think of a quail whistled “Bob White” and a shitepoke, skulking along the river bank, stopped and cried, “Cowk, cowk!”