"Jonathan, you are as tactless as the thrush."
"Don't kill me yet, though. Wait till I cut this last fellow. There! Now you're free. By George! But you're a wreck!"
That was the last time I ever tried to "work through brush," as Jonathan calls it. If I can catch trout by any method compatible with sanity, I am ready to do it, but as for allowing myself to be drawn into a situation wherein the note of the wood thrush stirs thoughts of murder in my breast—at that point, I opine, sport ceases.
So on that day of our runaway I kept to open waters and preserved a placid mind. The air was full of bird notes—in the big open woods the clear "whick-ya, whick-ya, whick-ya" of the courting yellowhammers, in the meadows bluebirds with their shy, vanishing call that is over almost before you can begin to listen, meadowlarks poignantly sweet, song sparrows with a lift and a lilt and a carol, and in the swamps the red-wings trilling jubilant.
Noon came, and we camped under the sunny lee of a ridge that was all abloom with hepaticas—clumps of lavender and white and rosy-lilac. We found a good spring, and a fallen log, and some dead hemlock tips to start a fire, and soon we had a merry blaze. Then Jonathan dressed some of the trout, while I found a black birch tree and cut forked sticks for broilers. Any one who has not broiled fresh-caught trout outdoors on birch forks—or spice bush will do almost as well—has yet to learn what life holds for him. Chops are good, too, done in that way. We usually carry them along when there is no prospect of fish, or, when we are sure of our country, we take a tin cup and buy eggs at a farmhouse to boil. But the balancing of the can requires a happy combination of stones about the fire that the brief nooning of a day's tramp seldom affords, and baking is still more uncertain. Bacon is good, but broiling the little slices—and how they do shrink!—takes too long, while frying entails a pan. Curiously enough, a pan, in addition to two fish baskets and a landing-net, does not find favor in Jonathan's eyes.
After luncheon and a long, lazy rest on our log we went back to the stream and loitered down its bank. Pussy-willows, their sleek silver paws bursting into fat, caterpillary things, covered us with yellow pollen powder as we brushed past them. Now and then we were arrested by the sharp fragrance of the spice bush, whose little yellow blossoms had escaped our notice. In the damp hollows the ground was carpeted with the rich, mottled green leaves and tawny yellow bells of the adder's-tongue, and the wet mud was sweet with the dainty, short-stemmed white violets. On the dry, barren places were masses of saxifrage, bravely cheerful; on the rocky slopes fragile anemones blew in the wind, and fluffy green clumps of columbine lured us on to a vain search for an early blossom.
As the afternoon waned, and the wind freshened crisply, we guessed that it was milking-time, and wandered up to a farmhouse where we persuaded the farmer's wife to give us bread and cheese and warm new milk. We were urged to "set inside," but preferred to take the great white pitcher of milk out to the steps of the little back porch where we could hear the insistent note of the little phœbe that was building under the eaves of the woodshed. Our hostess stood in the doorway, watching in amused tolerance as we filled and refilled our goblets. They were wonderful goblets, be it said—the best the house afforded. Jonathan's was of fancy green glass, all covered with little knobs; mine was yellow, with a head of Washington stamped on one side, and "God Bless our Country" on the other. Finally the good woman broke the silence— "Guess your mothers ain't never weaned ye." Which we were not in a position to refute.
On our return train we found the same conductor who had taken us out in the morning. As he folded back the green cover of our mileage book he could not forbear remarking, quizzically, "Know how far you're goin' to-night?"
"Jonathan," I said, as we settled to toast and tea before our home fireplace that evening, "I like running away. I don't blame horses."