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It was probably the blue yellow-backed warbler, as I have since found this to be a common bird in those woods; but to my young fancy it seemed like some fairy bird, so unexpected. I saw it a moment as the flickering leaves parted, noted the white spot on its wing, and it was gone. How the thought of it clung to me afterward! It was a revelation.
Here, too, I saw at different times an adult male blue yellow-backed warbler, and a bird of the same species in immature plumage. It seemed highly probable, to say the least, that the young fellow had been reared not far off, the more so as the neighboring Wellfleet woods were spectral with hanging lichens, of the sort which this exquisite especially affects.
The one particular was the chimney-piece, which displayed a varied assortment of pipes, tobacco, cigar-boxes, and yellow-backed French novels. "Mr. Forsyth, I believe?" It was Michael who thus opened the engagement. "We have come to trouble you with a piece of business. I fear it's scarcely professional " "I am afraid I ought to be instructed through a solicitor," replied Gideon.
She was one of those secluded maiden ladies so common in England, whose experience of life is limited to a tea party, and whose further knowledge of life is derived from the yellow-backed French novels which fill their bookcases. "How was it that you happened to meet William I think you said his name was William?" "It was the day, miss, that I went to fetch the beer from the public-house.
Then, searching through her room, he found some ribbons and lace, a yellow-backed novel, which he handled with the utmost loathing, and a pair of gloves. Regarding these things as the instruments of Satan, by which his daughter had been led to destruction, he carried them downstairs to his dismal study and piled them in the empty fireplace.
The gaslight revealed the details of the sordid room, a satin box of sweetmeats on the table, a penny bunch of sweet violets in a specimen-glass, one or two yellow-backed novels, and a few photographs ranged upon the imitation marble mantelpiece. There was one arm-chair, whose torn lining indecently revealed the interior stuffing, and there were three other chairs with wooden backs.
Great-crested flycatchers, two Acadian flycatchers, a multitude of blue yellow-backed warblers, and what I supposed to be some loud-voiced frogs were especially conspicuous in the concert; but a Carolina wren, a cardinal, a red-eyed vireo, and a blue-gray gnatcatcher, the last with the merest thread of a voice, contributed their share to the medley, and once a chickadee struck up his sweet and gentle strain in the very depths of the swamp like an angel singing in hell.
A moment later Melky, treading close on the detective's heels, found himself ushered into a brilliantly-lighted, rather over-heated room, somewhat luxuriously furnished, wherein, in the easiest of chairs, a cigar in his lips, a yellow-backed novel in his hand, sat a slimly-built, elegant young gentleman whose face was melting to a smile. Ayscough was on his guard as soon as he saw that smile.
The bookseller's window was filled with yellow-backed novels and toy-books, which obviously would not do. So they marched in and demanded a book suitable for a clergyman who had a good many books already "a middle-aged clergyman," George added. "You can't go far wrong with this," suggested the bookseller, producing Crockford's "Clerical Directory" for the current year.
For a Massachusetts ornithologist the mere sight of such a bird was enough to make a pretty good Thanksgiving Day. Blue yellow-backed warblers were singing here and there, and I retain a particular remembrance of one bluebird that warbled to us from the pine-woods. One bird, soaring in company with a buzzard at a most extraordinary height straight over the river, greatly excited my curiosity.
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