And when you do lie awake at night, it is always making its unobtrusive
appeal. Gradually its hypnotic spell works. The distant chimes ring
louder and nearer as you cross the borderland of sleep. And then
outside the tent some little woods noise snaps the thread. An owl
hoots, a whippoorwill cries, a twig cracks beneath the cautious prowl
of some night creature--at once the yellow sunlit French meadows puff
away--you are staring at the blurred image of the moon spraying through
the texture of your tent.

The voices of the rapids have dropped into the background, as have the
dashing noises of the stream. Through the forest is a great silence,
but no stillness at all. The whippoorwill swings down and up the short
curve of his regular song; over and over an owl says his rapid
_whoo_, _whoo_, _whoo_. These, with the ceaseless dash of the rapids,
are the web on which the night traces her more delicate embroideries
of the unexpected. Distant crashes, single and impressive;
stealthy footsteps near at hand; the subdued scratching of claws; a
faint _sniff! sniff! sniff!_ of inquiry; the sudden clear tin-horn
_ko-ko-ko-oh_ of the little owl; the mournful, long-drawn-out cry
of the loon, instinct with the spirit of loneliness; the ethereal
call-note of the birds of passage high in the air; a _patter_,
_patter_, _patter_ among the dead leaves, immediately stilled;
and then at the last, from the thicket close at hand, the
beautiful silver purity of the white-throated sparrow--the nightingale
of the North--trembling with the ecstasy of beauty, as though a
shimmering moonbeam had turned to sound; and all the while the blurred
figure of the moon mounting to the ridge-line of your tent--these
things combine subtly, until at last the great Silence of which they
are a part overarches the night and draws you forth to contemplation.