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Updated: June 7, 2025
It was delicious going to bed in that curious place, with the stars shining in and the katydids singing. It gave them all a new view of life. "Now, the first feller that wakes up, yell," said Bert, as he crept under the blanket. "First feller asleep, whistle," said Lincoln. "That won't be you, that's sure," grumbled Rance, already dozing. As a matter of fact, no one slept much.
We also helped to put up cots and to hang mosquito nettings, and at night we lay and listened to the most vociferous concert of bull frogs, debutante frogs, tree toads, katydids, locusts, and iku lizards that ever murdered the sleep of the just.
And something did happen, something of quite unexpected and startling character. The scouts had been gone about half an hour and the night had settled down to a blanket of darkness on the earth, a sprinkle of starlight in the sky, the croaking of frogs, the songs of katydids and the occasional ripple of water on the lake shore. A poet might have breathed a sigh of delightful awe.
Two Katydids had said a pleasant "Good-morning" to him, and almost jumped out of their green coats when he snapped out, "It ain't" Mrs. Cricky in passing by chirped pleasantly, and Glummie glowered so out of his great, fierce red-brown eyes at her that she hurried on, in terror of her life.
From every tree and shrub the katydids contradicted one another with increasing emphasis, as if conscious that the time was at hand when the last word must be spoken. The stars glimmered near through a delicate haze, and in the western sky the pale crescent of the moon was so inclined that the old Indian might have hung upon it his powder-horn.
Wren, the housekeeper, opening the windows in the upper rooms of the mansion to let in the night air, which was stirring over the valley with a delicious mountain chill on its wings. All around in the trees and shrubbery the katydids were rasping away in immelodious statement and denial of the ancient accusation. Barnaby demurred.
Thereafter he lay hearing the robins laugh and the orioles whistle, and then the frogs and katydids at night. These men with greasy vests and unkempt beards came in every day. They bathed him, and helped him to and from the bed. They helped to dress him and move him to the window, where he could look out on the blessed green of the grass. O God, it was so beautiful!
The words only came to her clearly as his retreating footsteps grew fainter and his tall figure faded in the darkening light. She made a hasty step or two after him, then checked herself and listened intently to see if he were not returning, and then, as only the katydids answered, threw herself flat on the ground and grovelled in the darkness.
He missed the confusion and glare of the city. Kendall had fallen fast asleep, and was breathing loudly in half a minute. But Checkers lay wide-eyed and wondering, listening to the locusts and katydids outdoing themselves in the trees outside. And then he fell to speculating about his chances for the future, wondering what the probable outcome of this new venture of his was to be.
Of Robert Harding and the rest of his family nothing is known. The house retains its evil reputation, but the replanted vine is as orderly and well-behaved a vegetable as a nervous person could wish to sit under of a pleasant night, when the katydids grate out their immemorial revelation and the distant whippoorwill signifies his notion of what ought to be done about it.
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