Every bluejay is a born tease, and in the late August drought goes about crying “Rain, rain,” because he knows there will be no rain. He does it merely to fool the pasture people and then chuckle in his phonograph twang over their misery when no rain comes. Yesterday when he smelt the south wind and saw that sky pallor he stopped calling “Rain, rain,” for he knew it was coming. Instead he fluttered round and round the pasture, ducking in among the boughs of the pines and ejaculating, as if he were surprised to find it so, “Clear, clear.” I fancy all the wild creatures of wood and pasture know the signs better than I do and could announce the rain if they would long before I know that it is coming. All the outdoor world was sure of it yesterday. With the very first show of that paleness in the sky--or was it something in the touch of the wind?--the drooping plants lifted their leaves to be ready for it. I could smell it in the falling of the wind at sunset; they seemed to smell it in mid-forenoon while yet the wind was rising. On such days looking across the pond toward wind and sun there is a peculiar blink in the light reflected from the surface of the waves which you do not see if fair weather is ahead of you. The pale sky seems to reflect blackly in the water. Down to leeward the shore poplars stand silvery white, a quivering, flashing silver under the lash of the wind. The swamp maples lose their green and turn pale and the willows lighten up in color. It is the turning of the leaves in the wind. You may say that they would turn in any wind and show their lighter under sides, and this is true, yet there is a difference in the appearance when it is a rain-bringing wind. I cannot tell you why this should be, but the difference is there. It may be that a moist wind relaxes the tension of the petioles more than a dry one and thus lets the leaf lie flatter, giving a little different look to the tree as a whole. The weather-wise older people grew up on the land instead of within walls and they were wont to say, “The leaves are turning in the wind and it is going to rain.” Like the pasture people they knew. By nightfall the weather bureau suspected something but was not quite sure what. They hung out the “possible rain” flag, and all the crows in the pinewood, congregating now in bigger and bigger flocks, practising, I take it, for their labor-day parade, went into fits of laughter. “Haw, haw, haw!” they shouted, and whirled up into the sky and took a look about and dashed down again, convulsed. “Haw, haw, haw! Possible rain; here’s the sky just ready to spill out a twenty-four hour soaker!”