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Catharine, in distributing the beads and cloth, took care that the best portion should fall to the grand-daughter of the chief, the pretty, good-humoured "Snow-bird."
Hummocks clustered round several rocky islets in the neighbourhood, and the rising and falling of the tide covered the sides of the rocks with bright crystals. All the feathered tribes took their departure for less rigorous climes, with the exception of a small white bird about the size of a sparrow, called the snow-bird, which is the last to leave the icy North.
An effort was once made in Massachusetts to keep a wounded snow-bunting through the summer, but at last it died from the heat. They are usually on the wing northward early in March. "The ordinary snow-bird is a very unpretentious and familiar little friend.
It is known that the Snow-Bird, or "Snow-Flake," as it is called in England, was reported by Audubon as having only once been proved to build in the United States, namely, among the White Mountains, though Wilson found its nests among the Alleghanies; and in New England it used to be the rural belief that the Snow-Bird and the Chipping-Sparrow were the same.
A snow-bird was the last visitor, and he came nearer and nearer, not at all frightened, merely curious, but madam evidently distrusted him, for she flew at him, intimating in a way that he plainly understood that "his room was better than his company." Still I floundered on, and now the disturbed mother added a new cry, like the bleating of a lamb.
It was as though King Edward had condescended to mingle with ten-spots of a different suit; or Joe Gans had casually strolled in to look over the Tuskegee School; or Mr. Shaw, of England, had accepted an invitation to read selections from "Rena, the Snow-bird" at an unveiling of the proposed monument to James Owen O'Connor at Chinquapin Falls, Mississippi.
"When the winter is done I will come back home, To the nest swinging under and over, Swinging under and over and waiting for me, Your rover, my snow-bird, your rover Your lover and rover, don, don!... don, don!" It was all very well in the mouth of the sprightly, sentimental Benoit; it was hateful foolishness in Farette.
Sharp, metallic chirps were heard, also, as the blue snow-bird flitted about, showing the white feathers on either side of its tail, in scudding from one sheltering bush to another. Doubtless, careful search would have discovered its home, snugly built of circularly laid grasses, and tucked deeply into some cozy hollow beside the root of a spruce.
It did not suit to-day. Hours passed. The night crept on towards morning, colder, stiller. Faint bars of gray fell on the stretch of hill-tops, broad and pallid. The shaggy peaks blanched whiter in it. You could hear from the road-bushes the chirp of a snow-bird, wakened by the tramp of his horse, or the flutter of its wings.
"Snow-bird" informed Catharine that the lodges would not again be removed for some time, but that the men would hunt and fish, while the squaws pursued their domestic labours.
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