"The grass grows up to the front door, and the forest comes down to the back; it's the end of the road, and the woods are full of bluejays."

Such was the siren song that lured me to a certain nook on the side of the highest mountain in Massachusetts one June. The country was gloriously green and fresh and young, as if it had just been created. From my window I looked down the valley beginning between Greylock and Ragged Mountain, and winding around other and (to me) nameless hills till lost in the distance, apparently cut square off by what looked like an unbroken chain from east to west. The heavy forests which covered the hills ended in steep grass-covered slopes, with dashing and hurrying mountain brooks between, and, save the road, scarcely a trace of man was seen.

The birds were already there. The robin came on to the rail fence, and with rain pouring off his sleek coat, bade us "Be cheery! be cheery!" the bluebird sat silent and motionless on a fence post; the "veery's clarion" rang out all the evening from the valley below; many little birds sang and called; and

But the bluejays?

The bluejays, too, were there. One saucily flirted his tail at me from the top of a tree; another sly rogue flaunted his blue robes over a wall and disappeared the other side; a third shrieked in my face and slipped away behind a tree; but one and all were far too wise to reveal their domestic secrets. I knew mysteries were on foot among them, as we know little folk are in mischief by their unnatural stillness, but I knew also that not until every jay baby was out of the nest, and there was nothing to hide, should I see that cunning bird in his usual noisy, careless rÔle.

The peculiarity of that particular corner of nature's handiwork was that any way you went you had to climb, except east, where you might roll if you chose; in fact, you could hardly do otherwise. The first day of my hunt I started west. I climbed a hill devoted to pasture, passed through the bars, and faced my mountain. It presented a compact front of spruce-trees closely interlaced at the ground, and of course impassable. But a way opened in the midst, the path of a mountain brook, deserted now and dry. I sought an alpenstock. I abandoned all impedimenta. I started up that stony path escorted on each side by a close rank of spruce. It was exceedingly steep, for the way of a brook on this mountain-side is a constant succession of falls. I scrambled over rocks; I stumbled on rolling stones; I "caught" on twigs and dead branches; I crept under fallen tree trunks; the way grew darker and more winding. How merrily had the water rushed down this path, so hard to go up! How easy for it to do so again! Nothing seemed so natural. I began to look and listen for it.

A mysterious reluctance to penetrating the heart of the mountain by this unknown and strangely hewn path stole over me. I felt like an intruder. Who could tell what the next turn might reveal? On a fallen trunk that barred my way I seated myself to rest. The silence was oppressive; not a bird called, not a squirrel chattered, not an insect hummed. The whole forest was one vast, deep, overwhelming solitude. I felt my slightest rustle an impertinence; I could not utter a sound; surely the spirit of the wood was near! A strange excitement, almost amounting to terror, possessed me. I turned and fled—that is to say, crept—down my steep and winding stair, back to the bars where I had taken leave of civilization (in the shape of one farmhouse).

Here I paused, and again the legend of bluejays allured me. From the bars, turning sharply to one side, were the tracks of cows. The strange feeling of oppression vanished. Wherever the gentle beasts had passed, I could go, sure of finding sunny openings, grassy spots, and nothing uncanny. Meekly I followed in their footsteps; the solemn grandeur of the forest had so stirred me that even the footprint of a cow was companionable.

This path led down through a pleasant fringe of beech and birch and maple trees to a beautiful brook, which was easily crossed on stones, then up the bank on the other side into an open pasture with scattering spruce and other trees. Now I began to look for my bluejays. I disturbed the peace of a robin, who scolded me roundly from the top spire of a spruce. I started out in hot haste a dainty bit of bird life—the black and yellow warbler. I listened to the delightsome song of the field-sparrow. I heard the far-off drumming of the partridge. I walked and climbed myself tired.

Then I sat down to wait. I made a nosegay of blue violets and sweetbrier leaves; I regaled myself with wintergreens in memory of my childhood; I wrote up my note-book; but never a blue feather did I see.

The next day, between showers, I tried the north, with a guide—a visiting Massachusetts ornithologist—to show me a partridge nest with the bird sitting. We followed the ups and downs of the road for a mile, passing a meadow full of bobolinks,

climbed by a grass-grown wood road a mountain-side pasture, and reached the forest. Under a dead spruce sat my lady, in a snug bed among the fallen leaves. She was wet; her lovely mottled plumage was disarranged and draggled, but her head was drawn down into her feathers in patient endurance, the mother love triumphant over everything, even fear. We stood within six feet of the shy creature; we discussed her courage in the face of the human monsters we felt ourselves to be. Not a feather fluttered, not an eyelid quivered; truly it was the perfect love that casteth out fear.

My guide went on up to the top of Greylock; I turned back to pursue my search.

Eastward was my next trip, down toward the brook that made a valley between Greylock and Ragged Mountain. My path was under the edge of the woods that fringed a mountain stream. Not the smallest of the debt we owe the bonny brook is that it wears a deep gully, whose precipitous sides are clothed with a thick growth of waving trees—beech, white and black birches, maple, and chestnut—in refreshing and delightful confusion. The stream babbled and murmured at my side as I walked slowly down, peering in every bush for nests, and at last I parted the branches like a curtain and stepped within. It was a cool green solitude, a shrine, one of nature's most enchanting nooks, sacred to dreams and birds and—woodchucks, one of which sat straight up and looked solemnly at me out of his great brown eyes.

I sat on the low-growing limb of a tree, and was rocked by the wind outside. I forgot my object. What did it matter that I should find my bluejay? Was it worth while to go on? Was anything worth while, indeed, except to dream and muse, lulled by the music of the "laughing water"? Ah! if one were a poet!

Then the birds came. A cat-bird first, with witching low song, eying me closely with that calm, dark eye of his, the while he poured it out from a shrub,

a vireo, repeating over and over his few notes in tireless warble; high up in the maple across the chasm, a sweet-voiced goldfinch singing his soul away outside; and lastly, a robin, who broke the charm by a peremptory demand to know my business in his private quarters. I rose to leave him in possession. In rising I disturbed another resident, a red squirrel, who ran out on a branch and delivered as vehement a piece of mind as I ever heard, stamping his little feet and jerking his bushy tail with every word, scolding all over, to the tip of his longest hair.

I left them in their green paradise. I went to my room. I sat down in my rocker to consider.

Then the winds got up. Through the "bellows pipe," as they suggestively call the head of the valley, there poured such a gale that the birds could hardly hold on to their perches. All day long it tossed the branches, tore off leaves, beat the birds, rattled the windows, and filled the blue cover to our green bowl of a valley with clouds, even half way down the sides of the mountains themselves. And at last they began to weep, and I spent my twilight by an open window, wrapped in a shawl, listening to the

and looking out upon the hills, where I still hoped to find my bluejay.