Listen! they are answering me from
the clouds! I wish I could fly up in the clouds! Travelling, as I
live, away off to the south!--leaving us to go and join their fellows.
They are wild birds; I've shot many of em'. Hark, Longears! see up
there! There they go--'crake! crake! crake!' I can see their long
necks stretched out toward the South--they are almost gone--going away
from me--like Redbud!"
And Verty sighed piteously.
"I wonder what makes my breast feel as if there was a weight upon it,"
he said, "I'll ask _ma mere_."
And putting spurs to Cloud, Verty scoured through the pine hills, and
in an hour drew near his home.
It was one of those mountain huts which are frequently met with to
this day in our Virginian uplands. Embowered in pines, it rather
resembled, seen from a distance, the eyrie of some huge eagle, than
the abode of human beings, though eagles' eyries are not generally
roofed in, with poles and clapboards.
The hut was very small, but not as low pitched as usual, and the place
had about it an air of wild comfort, which made it a pleasant object
in the otherwise unbroken landscape of pines, and huge rocks, and
browling streams which stretched around it.
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