What I was saying is that we started home all abloom with our pitcher-plants and goldthread and partridge-berry and holly and glowing black alder, and all aglow inside with our vigorous tramp, and with the gray grave beauty of the landscape, and with the stern joy of meeting and beating the cold, and with the signs of life--of the cozy muskrats in their lodge beneath the ice-cap on the meadow; with the hairy woodpecker in his deep warm hole in the heart of a tree; with the red warm berries in our basket; with the chirping, the capable, the conquering chickadee accompanying us and singing, “For well the soul, if stout within, Can arm impregnably the skin; And polar frost my form defied, Made of the air that blows outside.” And actually as we came over the bleak meadow, one of the boys said that he thought he heard a song-sparrow singing! And I said I thought the pussy-willows by the brook had opened a little since we had passed them coming out! And we all declared that the weather had changed, and that there were signs of a break-up. But the thermometer stood at fifteen above zero when we got home--one degree colder than when we started! We had had a January thaw, however, and it had come off inside of us, as the color on the four glowing faces showed. The birthday came off on the morrow, and I wonder if there ever was a more interesting or a more loving gift of flowers than those from the January woods? CHAPTER VII AFTER THE LOGGERS CHAPTER VII AFTER THE LOGGERS I lay listening to the rain spattering against the fly of the tent and dripping through the roof of birch leaves upon the sputtering fire and soaking down into the deep, spongy bottom of the forest--softly, as soft as something breathing and asleep. The guide and the boy beside me were asleep, but I had been awakened by the rain. The rain always wakens me. And in my grave, I think, if I lie sleeping under a roof of forest leaves, I shall wake and listen when it rains. Before the stars sang together the primordial waters made music to the rising land; before the winds came murmuring through the trees the waves were fingering the sweet-tuned sands strung down the sounding shores; and before the birds found their tongues, or the crickets their little fiddles, or even the toad had blown his quavering conch, it had rained! And when it rained--and not until it rained--the whole earth woke into song. Mother of music is the water, and, for me, the sweetest of her daughters is the rain, and never sweeter, not even on the shingles, nor down the rolled, fevered blades of the standing corn, than in the deep woods at night upon the low slant roof of your tent.