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Sitting awhile on the parapet of a bridge, I saw a laborer chopping the branches off a poplar-tree which he had felled; and, when it was trimmed, he took up the large trunk on one of his shoulders and carried it off, seemingly with ease. He did not look like a particularly robust man; but I have never seen such an herculean feat attempted by an Englishman or American.
For as he went he first was smitten on his right breast beside the pap; straight though his shoulder passed the spear of bronze, and he fell to the ground in the dust like a poplar-tree, that hath grown up smooth in the lowland of a great marsh, and its branches grow upon the top thereof; this hath a wainwright felled with gleaming steel, to bend him a felloe for a goodly chariot, and so it lies drying by a river's banks.
He kept right on swimming with the branch of a poplar-tree until he reached his food pile, which, you know, is in the water. There he forced the branch down until it was held by other branches already sunken in the pond. This done, he swam over to where Lightfoot was watching. "Hello, Lightfoot!" he exclaimed. "You are looking handsomer than ever. How are you feeling these fine autumn days?"
For several days following my happy discovery I spent much time watching domestic affairs in the poplar-tree. The little matron was not a steady sitter.
Near me on one side was an irregular row of poplar-trees, and the long, dark lines cast from them by the moon fell across a wide, open space where the rank-growing thorn-apples predominated. In the spaces between the broad bands made by the poplar-tree shadows, the foliage appeared of a dim, hoary blue, starred over with the white blossoms of this night-flowering weed.
"I don't know, sir," repeated Swan, still raking peaceably. "He cannot be very far off, Swanny," said Brandon, "we saw him up the poplar-tree not a quarter of an hour ago." "Ay, sir, I shouldn't wonder," said Swan carelessly. "Bless you, whether their folks air rich or poor, they never think at that age what it costs to clothe 'em.
"Oh, Phil," she cried, running to him, "take me away from him: I cant bear " I turned towards him, and shewed him my dog-tooth in a false smile. He felled me at one stroke, as he might have felled a poplar-tree. "Murdher!" exclaimed the priest. "What are you doin, Phil?" "He's an informer," sobbed Kate.
During all this time I was hoping to see her mate. But if he appeared at all, as several times a ruby-throated individual did, she promptly sent him about his business. It was the 19th of July when I decided that sitting had finally begun on the poplar-tree nest, madam controlling her restlessness sometimes for the great space of ten minutes, and working no more on the structure.
Red and gray squirrels scampered across our path, but Willis disdained to fire at them. He was loaded for deer; besides he had but three extra charges. Powder and shot were usually scarce with us. At length we heard a deer run, and followed it for an hour or more. Then John espied a hedgehog in a poplar-tree, and Willis shot it.
His heart set up a furious beating. No power on earth could have prevented him from landing, though common sense told him clearly no good could come of it. That "perhaps" drew him ashore, that hope against hope. After a short search he found her sleeping under a poplar-tree in a hollow of the bank that was hidden from the river.
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