In fact, from the woods in front of us, and not a bowshot away, rang out a powerful voice: —

“‘In the merry month of May,

In a morn by break of day,

With a troop of damsels playing

Forth I went, forsooth, a-maying;’“

and presently, the trees thinning in front of us, we came upon a little open glade and upon the singer. He lay on his back, on the soft turf beneath an oak, with his hands clasped behind his head and his eyes upturned to the blue sky showing between leaf and branch. On one knee crossed above the other sat a squirrel with a nut in its paws, and half a dozen others scampered here and there over his great body, like so many frolicsome kittens. At a little distance grazed an old horse, gray and gaunt, springhalt and spavined, with ribs like Death’s