Joyce of the North Woods

The man lying flat on the rock which crusted Beacon Hill raised his head with a snake-like motion, and then let it fall back again upon his folded arms. His body had not moved; it seemed part of the stone and moss. The midsummer afternoon was sunny and hot, and the fussy little river rambling through the Long Meadow was talking in its sleep. Lazily it wound around young maples, and ferny groups-it would crush them by and by, poor trusting things-then it would stumble against a rock or pile of loose stones, wake up and repeat the strain it had learned at its mother's breast, far up in the North Woods.