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Again the falling sun streamed in broad banners across the valleys; again the blue mist lay far down the coulee over the river; the cattle called from the hills in the moistening, sonorous air; the bells came in a pleasant tangle of sound; the air pulsed with the deepening chorus of katydids and other nocturnal singers.
It is this unique and unmistakable character of the lark's song, and its fountain-like sparkle and copiousness, that are the main sources of its charm. How the nocturnal insects, the tree-crickets and katydids, fail as the heat fails!
Don't talk of the solitude of a night in the primeval forests, however far from the abodes of man; the squirrels and the partridges may be asleep then and there, but the katydids are awake, and, with the support of contralto and barytone tree-toads, manage to keep up a concert which cannot fail to impress on you a sense of familiar and friendly company.
Through the timbered slopes came the soft cadences of the night's minstrels the voices of frogs and katydids and the plaintive call of the whippoorwills. Alexander had been deeply reflective as she sat with her lovely chin resting on one hand, listening to the low-pitched voice in which her lover was pleading his cause. "I kain't be sure not yit," was her uncertain response to all his argument.
The stars were thick in the sky; the katydids made the night oppressive with their rasping questionings, and a hoarse revel of frogs kept the ponds from falling asleep in the shadow of the hills. "Is thee very tired to-night, Dorothy?" her mother asked, as she took her seat on the low step of the porch. "Would thee mind turning old John out thyself?" "No, mother, I'm not tired. But why?
Standing thus in the happiness of loving and being loved, the soft indefiniteness of the landscape and the incessant hum of the field-crickets and katydids, sounds which came out of the everywhere, soothed Charlton like the song of a troubadour. "Mr. Charlton!"
The katydids were prophesying with strident music the six weeks' warning of frost. Myriads of stars were soft and low-hanging. Finally, she spoke in a grave voice: "Hit hain't nothin' ter git mad about, Samson. The artist man 'lowed as how ye had a right ter go down thar, an' git an eddication." She made a weary gesture toward the great beyond. "He hadn't ought to of told ye, Sally.
She set out to get clear of me and I let her have her way, same as I done in everything else." "She didn't set out to get clear of you." "She did." "No, she didn't." "I say she did." Mrs. Bascom rose once more. "Seth Bascom," she declared, "if all you wanted me to stay here for is to be one of a pair of katydids, hollerin' at each other, I'm goin'. I'm no bug; I'm a woman."
The organ of hearing in insects is still to be discovered in many forms, but in katydids it is situated on the middle of the fore-legs; in butterflies on the sides of the thorax, while the tip of the horns or antennæ of many insects is considered to be the seat of this function.
So the only way I can keep them out is to pen them up. Don, you may carry water for the little pigs and they will need plenty, too, because it is so warm." That pleased Don, and he began at once to fill the trough which Grandpa had placed in the pen. That evening, Grandpa and Grandma and the children sat on the porch, listening to the chirp of the katydids and the call of the whippoorwills.
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