The alarmed gamekeeper, not liking the fiddler's looks and
voice, anxiously inquired what he was going to do with it. "Surely,"
said he, "you're no gan to shoot yoursel." "No-o," with characteristic
candor replied the penitent fiddler, "I dinna think that I'll juist
exactly kill mysel, but I'm gaun to tak a dander doon the burn (brook)
wi' the gun and gie mysel a deevil o' a fleg (fright)."
One calm summer evening a red-headed woodpecker was drowned in our
lake. The accident happened at the south end, opposite our memorable
swimming-hole, a few rods from the place where I came so near being
drowned years before. I had returned to the old home during a summer
vacation of the State University, and, having made a beginning in
botany, I was, of course, full of enthusiasm and ran eagerly to my
beloved pogonia, calopogon, and cypripedium gardens, osmunda
ferneries, and the lake lilies and pitcher-plants. A little before
sundown the day-breeze died away, and the lake, reflecting the wooded
hills like a mirror, was dimpled and dotted and streaked here and
there where fishes and turtles were poking out their heads and
muskrats were sculling themselves along with their flat tails making
glittering tracks.
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