For the present it seemed to him that nothing could be more delightful and more appropriate to the hour than to lie under the thick-leaved maple at the top of the bank, and smoke and gaze out in lotus-eating mood across the enchanted radiance of the water.
Even the Child, usually as restless as the dragonflies themselves or those exponents of perpetual motion, the brown water skippers, was lying on his back, quite still, and staring up with round, contemplative blue eyes through the diaphanous green of the maple leaves.
Though his eyes were so very wide open, it was that extreme but ephemeral openness which a child's eyes so frequently assume just before closing up very tight.

In fact, in just about three-eights of a minute he would have been, in all probability, sound asleep, with a rose-pink light, sifted through his eyelids, dancing joyously over his dreams.

But at that moment there came a strange cry from up the sweeping curve of the shore--so strange a cry that the Child sat up instantly very straight, and demanded, with a gasp, "What's that ?" Uncle Andy did not answer for a moment.

Perhaps it was because he was so busy lighting his pipe, or perhaps he hoped to hear the sound again before committing himself--for so experienced a woodsman as he was had good reason to know that most of the creatures of the wild have many different cries, and sometimes seem to imitate each other in the strangest fashion.

He had not long to wait.