“But who would suppose that such a tiny little frogling could make such a loud, shrill, and ear-piercing sound?  Who would think that a million of such puny things, could make the air of a summer evening so full of the music of their songs?  I remember how, in my boyhood, I listened to their voices, which came up loudest, shrillest, merriest, when twilight was spreading its grey mantle over the earth; while the song of the birds was hushing into silence, and the coming darkness was lulling the things of the day into repose; Oh! how merrily they sang along the little brooklet that took its rise in a spring in the meadow, and wended its way among the young grass, just springing into verdure, to the beautiful lake beyond.  Their song is in my ear now, and that meadow, that beautiful lake, the tall hills on the summits of which the departing sunlight lingered, the tall maples that clustered in their conelike beauty around that gushing fountain, the clustered plum trees, the giant oak, spared by the woodman’s axe when the old forest was swept away, the fields, the ‘Gulf’ in the hill-side, and the beautiful creek, that came cascading down the shelving rocks, and leaping over precipices in which the speckled trout sported:  all these are before me now—­a vision of loveliness, all the more dear because stamped upon the memory when life was young.  Oh!  Time!  Time! the wrecks that lie scattered in thy pathway!  That little brooklet, and the peepers, the fountain, the maples, and the meadow, are all gone.  The brave old oak was riven by the lightning.  The fields have crept up to the very summit of the hills, and even the stream that came down from the mountain has vanished away, save when the rains, or the melting snows send it in a freshet over the rocks where, when I was a boy, it was cascading always.  That beautiful meadow, too, is gone, and the streets of a modern village, with blocks of houses, and stores, and shops, occupy the place where I swung my first scythe.  The old log-house vanished years and years ago.  A steamboat ploughs its way through that beautiful lake, and the things of my boyhood are but visions of memory, called up from the long, long past.  Not one landmark of the olden time remains.  Oh!  Time!  Time!”

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE CRICKET IN THE WALL—­THE MINISTER’S ILLUSTRATION—­OLD MEMORIES.

We spent the following day in drifting quietly around the lake, floating lazily in the little bays, under the shadow of the tall trees, and lounging upon small islands, gathering the low-bush whortleberries which grew in abundance upon them.  We filled our tin pails with this delicious fruit for a dessert for our evening meal.  On one of these islands we found indications of its being inhabited by wood rabbits, and we sent Cullen to the shanty for the dogs to course them, not however with any intention of capturing them, but to enjoy the music of the chase, and hear the