about and balanced on the boughs, it pumped its tail. This told him
it was a Hawk, and the colours he remembered were those of the male
Sparrow-hawk, for here his bird book helped with its rude travesty of
"Wilson's" drawing of this bird. Yet two other birds he saw close at
hand and drew partly from memory. The drawings were like this, and
from the picture on a calendar he learned that one was a Rail; from
a drawing in the bird book that the other was a Bobolink. And these
names he never forgot. He had his doubts about the sketching at
first--it seemed an un-Indian thing to do, until he remembered that
the Indians painted pictures on their shields and on their teepees. It
was really the best of all ways for him to make reliable observation.

The bookseller of the town had some new books in his window about this
time. One, a marvellous work called "Poisonous Plants," Yan was eager
to see. It was exposed in the window for a time. Two of the large
plates were visible from the street; one was Henbane, the other
Stramonium. Yan gazed at them as often as he could. In a week they
were gone; but the names and looks were forever engraved on his
memory. Had he made bold to go in and ask permission to see the work,
his memory would have seized most of it in an hour.




IX

Tracks


In the wet sand down by the edge of the brook he one day found some