(унылое уханье сипухи: dreary – тоскливый; hooting – уханье; screech owl – сипуха)
or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. (или внезапный шорох в зарослях, где спугнулись птицы с насеста: rustling – шорох; thicket – заросли; to frighten – пугать; roost – насест)
He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvellous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary; and both had been increased by his residence in this spell-bound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather’s direful tales, until the gathering dusk of evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination, – the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost.
The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, (Светлячки тоже, которые ярче всего мерцали в самых тёмных местах: firefly – светлячок; to sparkle – сверкать, мерцать; vividly – ярко, живо; darkest – самые тёмные) now and then startled him, (время от времени пугали его: now and then – время от времени; to startle – испугать, поразить) as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; (когда особенно яркий пролетал по его пути: uncommon – необычный; brightness – яркость; to stream – промелькнуть, нестись; path – тропинка, путь) and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, (и если случайно какой-нибудь огромный глупый жук налетал на него своим неуклюжим полётом: by chance – случайно; huge – огромный; blockhead – олух, глупец (здесь шутливо про жука); beetle – жук; to wing – лететь, махать крыльями; blundering – неуклюжий, сбивчивый; flight – полёт)