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The Blackbird had also come across a most remarkable nest, that of the golden-crested wren. "My old friend, the Rook, tells me," said the Blackbird, "that this wren is the very smallest of our birds. He certainly is a great beauty with his crown of golden feathers. His nest is in yonder yew-tree. It seems large for a bird of his size.
A pair of jays however appeared, and seemed too much interested in the nest for the parents' comfort, approaching so near one morning that first the cock blackbird, and then the hen attacked them; and though they returned again during the day, evidently bent on mischief, the courageous parents eventually drove them from the field, and they were seen no more.
And so it was sober moonrise before Moses found himself going home. "Hang that girl!" he said to himself; "don't she know what she's about, though?" There our hero was mistaken. Sally never did know what she was about, had no plan or purpose more than a blackbird; and when Moses was gone laughed to think how many times she had made him come back.
The Blackbird could not at all understand it, but as he was well sheltered, and soon got warm in the ivy, he fell asleep and forgot all about it. The next morning, however, when he woke up and peeped forth from his green canopy, he was much astonished by the sight which met his eyes. Everything was white!
"Well!" said the runner, "before long the sun will begin to rise; I shall wait until daylight to report to the Apaches that the Blackbird prefers his personal vengeance to the honour of the entire nation. By deferring my departure, I shall have retarded the moment when our warriors will have to regret the loss of the bravest among them."
Last Spring a vile cuckoo actually laid her egg in a wren's nest, and the two poor little wrens had to hatch and rear the young monster. You may fancy what hard work it was, it was nearly the death of them!" The Blackbird groaned sympathetically, for he remembered his own labours in that line.
The old hunter felt his heart melt at the sound of the two voices that he loved so much. A short silence followed, then came the answer from the bank. "The Blackbird wishes the white man to ask for life, and he asks for death.
When one shoots at a wooden figure it makes a hole. When one shoots at a man it makes a hole, and the doctor must make seven others. I heard a blackbird sing in the middle of the night last night two bars, and then another. I thought at first it might be a burglar whistling to his mate in the black and rustling garden. But it was a blackbird in a nightmare. Those distant guns again to-night....
And why did it matter so much to a man who knew everything? who held all the classics and all the Renaissance in the hollow of his hand, to whom "Latin was no more difficile, than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle"? Then, gradually, she began to have the courage to laugh; to try a little soft teasing of her new friend and mentor, who was at once so wonderful and so absurd.
If Shakespeare had made the house sparrow, or the blackbird, or the bunting, or any of the granivorous, hard-billed birds, the foster-parent of the cuckoo, his natural history would have been at fault. Shakespeare knew the flowers, too, and knew their times and seasons:
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