blue, or, finer spun, like a lady's veil, are drawn, gauzelike, across
the sky, through which the stars peep out with twinkling
brilliancy. The scent of new-mown hay laden with falling dew comes
floating up from the valley with an intoxicating sweetness, a
sweetness to which the far-famed perfume of Arabia is not to be
compared.

[Illustration: THE WITCHERY OF MOONLIGHT]

The crickets, those little black minstrels of the night, chirp under
the log upon which you are resting, and the katydids repeat over and
over again "Katy's" wonderful achievement, though just what this
amazing conquest was no one has been able to discover. The cicadas
join the chorus with their strident voices, their notes fairly
tumbling over each other in their exuberance, and in their hurry to
sing their solos. Tree toads tune up for the evening concert, a few
short notes at first, like a violinist testing the strings, then, the
pitch ascertained, the air fairly vibrates with their rhapsody.

Fireflies light their tiny lanterns and flash out their signals, like
beacon lights in the darkness, while, ringing up from the valley, the
call of the whip-poor-will echoes clear and sweet, each syllable
pronounced as distinctly as if uttered by a human voice. In a tree
overhead a screech owl emits his evening call in a clear, vibrating
tremolo, as if to warn the smaller birds that he is on watch, and
considers them his lawful prey. The night hawk wheels in his tireless
flight, graceful as a thistledown, soaring through space without a
seeming motion of the wings, emitting a whirring sound from wings and
tail feathers, and darting, now and again, with the swiftness of light
after some insect that comes under his keen vision.