It was hot, swelteringly hot, in that
packet of sand with the unclouded sun almost straight overhead. He
could have tossed a pebble to where a bright-eyed sandpiper was
cocking itself backward and forward, its jerky movements
accompanied by friendly little tittering noises. Everything about
him seemed friendly. The river rippled and murmured in cooling
song just beyond the sandpiper. On the other side the still cooler
forest was a paradise of shade and contentment, astir with subdued
and hidden life. It was nesting season. He heard the twitter of
birds. A tiny, brown wood warbler fluttered out to the end of a
silvery birch limb, and it seemed to David that its throat must
surely burst with the burden of its song. The little fellow's
brown body, scarcely larger than a butternut, was swelling up like
a round ball in his effort to vanquish all other song.
"Go to it, old man," chuckled Carrigan. "Go to it!"
The little warbler, that he might have crushed between thumb and
forefinger, gave him a lot of courage.
Then the tiny chorister stopped for breath. In that interval
Carrigan listened to the wrangling of two vivid-colored Canada
jays deeper in the timber.
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