It is poor
hunting to move about at such a time. Either the hunter or his game
must be still. Here the birds were moving constantly; one might see
more of them and their ways by just keeping quiet and invisible.
I sat down on the outer edge of a pine thicket, and became as much as
possible a part of the old stump which was my seat. Just in front an
old four-rail fence wandered across the deserted pasture, struggling
against the blackberry vines, which grew profusely about it and seemed
to be tugging at the lower rail to pull the old fence down to ruin. On
either side it disappeared into thickets of birch and oak and pitch
pine, planted, as were the blackberry vines, by birds that stopped to
rest a moment on the old fence or to satisfy their curiosity. Stout
young trees had crowded it aside and broken it. Here and there a
leaning post was overgrown with woodbine. The rails were gray and
moss-grown. Nature was trying hard to make it a bit of the landscape;
it could not much longer retain its individuality. The wild things of
the woods had long accepted it as theirs, though not quite as they
accepted the vines and trees.
As I sat there a robin hurled himself upon it from the top of a young
cedar where he had been, a moment before, practising his mating song.
He did not intend to light, but some idle curiosity, like my own, made
him pause a moment on the old gray rail.
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