bloody beak upon the bark. A youth who was with me, to whom I pointed out the fact, had never heard of such a thing, and was much incensed at the shrike. "Let me fire a stone at him," said he, and jumping out of the wagon he pulled off his mittens, and fumbled about for a stone. Having found one to his liking, with great earnestness and deliberation he let drive. The bird was in more danger than. I had imagined, for he escaped only by a hair's breadth; a guiltless bird like the robin or sparrow would have been slain; the missile grazed the spot where the shrike sat, and cut the ends of his wings as he darted behind the branch. We could see that the murdered bird had been brained, as its head hung down toward us. The shrike is not a summer bird with us in the northern states, but mainly a fall and winter one. In summer he goes farther north. I see him most frequently in November and December. A few days since we had one of those clear, motionless November mornings; the air was like a great drum. Apparently every sound within the compass of the horizon was distinctly heard. The explosions back in the cement quarries ten miles away smote the hollow and reverberating air like giant fists. Just as the sun first showed his fiery brow above the horizon, a gun was discharged over the river. On the instant, a shrike, perched on the topmost spray of a maple above the house, set up a loud, harsh call or whistle, suggestive of certain notes of the bluejay. The note presently became a crude, broken warble. Even this scalper of the innocents had music in his soul on such a morning. He saluted the sun as a robin might have done. After he had finished, he flew away toward the east. The shrike is a citizen of the world, being found in both hemispheres. It does not appear that the European species differs essentially from our own. In Germany he is called the nine-killer, from the belief that he kills and sticks upon thorns nine grasshoppers a day. Thoreau speaks of the shrike "with heedless and unfrozen melody bringing back summer again." But his voice is that of a savage-strident and disagreeable. "His steady sails he never furls At any time o' year, And perching now on winter's curls, He whistles in his ear," sings Thoreau. I have often wondered how this bird was kept in check; in the struggle for existence, it would appear to have greatly the advantage of other birds. It cannot, for instance, be beset with one-tenth of the dangers that threaten the robin, and yet apparently there are a thousand robins to every shrike. It builds a warm, compact nest in the mountains and dense woods, and lays six eggs, which would indicate a rapid increase. The pigeon lays but two eggs, and is preyed upon by both man and beast, millions of them meeting a murderous death every year; yet always some part of the country is swarming with untold numbers of them. But the shrike is one of our rarest birds. I myself seldom see more than two each year, and before I became an observer of birds, I never saw any. In size, the shrike is a little inferior to the blue-jay, with much the same form. If you see an unknown bird about your orchard or fields in November or December of a bluish, grayish complexion, with dusky wings and tail that show markings of white, flying rather heavily from point to point, or alighting down in the stubble occasionally, it is pretty sure to be the shrike. V. The cedar NATURE never tires of repeating and multiplying the same species. She makes a million bees, a million birds, a million mice, or rats, or other animals so nearly alike that no eye can tell one from another; but it is rarely that she issues a small and a large edition, as it were, of the same species. Yet she has done it in a few cases among the birds with hardly more difference than a foot-note added or omitted. bird, for instance, is the Bohemian waxwing or chatterer in smaller type, copied even to the minute, wax-like appendages that bedeck the ends of the wing-quills. It is about one-third smaller, and a little lighter in color, owing perhaps to the fact that it is confined to a warmer latitude, its northward range seeming to end about where that of its larger brother begins. Its flight, its note, its manners, its general character and habits are almost identical with those of its prototype. It is confined exclusively to this continent, while the chatterer is an Old World bird as well, and ranges the northern parts of both continents. The latter comes to us from the hyperborean regions, brought down occasionally by the great cold waves that originate in those high latitudes. It is a VOL. XV.-24. bird of Siberian and Alaskan evergreens, and passes its life for the most part far beyond the haunts of man. I have never seen the bird, but small bands of them make excursions every winter down into our territory from British America. Audubon, I believe, saw them in Maine; other observers have seen them in Minnesota. It has the crest of the cedar-bird, the same yellow border to its tail, but is marked with white on its wings, as if a snow-flake or two had adhered to it from the northern cedars and pines. If you see about the evergreens in the coldest, snowiest weather what appear to be a number of very large cherry-birds, observe them well, for the chances are that visitants from the circumpolar regions are before your door. It is a sign also that the frost legions of the north are out in great force and carrying all before them. Our cedar or cherry bird is the most silent bird we have. Our neutral-tinted birds, like him, as a rule, are our finest songsters; but he has no song or call, uttering only a fine bead-like note on taking flight. It is the cedar-berry rendered back in sound. When the ox-heart cherries, which he has only recently become acquainted with, have had time to enlarge his pipe and warm his heart, I shall expect more music from him. But in lieu of music, what a pretty compensation are those minute, almost artificiallike, plumes of orange and vermilion that tip the ends of his primaries. Nature could not give him these and a song too. She has given the humming-bird a jewel upon his throat, but no song, save the hum of his wings. ment is a fife tuned to love and not to war. He blows a clear, round note, rapid and intricate, but full of sweetness and melody. His hardier relative with that larger beak and deeper chest must fill the woods with sounds. Audubon describes its song as exceedingly rich and full. As in the case of the Bohemian wax-wing, this bird is also common to both worlds, being found through Northern Europe and Asia and the northern parts of this continent. It is the pet of the pine-tree and one of its brightest denizens. Its visits to the states are irregular and somewhat mysterious. A great flight of them occurred in the winter of '74-5. They attracted attention all over the country. Several other flights of them have occurred during the century. When this bird comes, it is so unacquainted with man, that its tameness is delightful to behold. It thrives remarkably well in captivity, and in a couple of weeks will become so tame that it will hop down and feed out of its master's or mistress's hand. It comes from far beyond the region of the apple, yet it takes at once to this fruit, or rather to the seeds, which it is quick to divine, at its core. Close akin to these two birds and standing in the same relation to each other are two other birds that come to us from the opposite zone,-the torrid,-namely, the blue grosbeak and his petit duplicate, the indigobird. The latter is a common summer resident with us,-a bird of the groves and bushy fields, where his bright song may be heard all through the long summer day. I hear it in the dry and parched August when most birds are silent, sometimes delivered on Another bird that is occasionally borne to the wing and sometimes from the perch. us on the crest of the cold waves from the Indeed, with me, its song is as much a midfrozen zone, and that is repeated on a smaller summer sound as is the brassy crescendo of scale in a permanent resident is the pine the cicada. The memory of its note calls grosbeak; his alter ego reduced in size, is to mind the flame-like quiver of the heated the purple finch, which abounds in the higher atmosphere, and the bright glare of the melatitudes of the temperate zone. The color ridian sun. Its color is much more intense and form of the two birds are again essen- than that of the common blue-bird, as sumtially the same. The females and young mer skies are deeper than those of April, males of both species are of a grayish-brown but its note is less mellow and tender. Its like the sparrow, while in the old males this original, the blue grosbeak, is an uncertain tint is imperfectly hidden beneath a coat of wanderer from the south, as the pine carmine, as if the color had been poured grosbeak is from the north. I have never upon their heads, where it is strongest, and seen it north of the District of Columbia. so oozed down and through the rest of the It has a loud vivacious song, of which it is plumage. Their tails are considerably forked, not stingy, and which is a large and free their beaks cone-shaped and heavy, and rendering of the indigo's, and belongs to their flight undulating. Those who have summer more than to spring. The bird is heard the grosbeak, describe its song as sim-colored the same as its lesser brother, the ilar to that of the finch, though no doubt it is louder and stronger. The finch's instru males being a deep blue and the females a modest drab. Its nest is usually placed low down, as is the indigo's, and the male carols from the tops of the trees in its vicinity in the same manner. Indeed, the two birds are strikingly alike in every respect except in size and habitat, and, as in each of the other cases, the lesser bird is, as it were, the point, the continuation, of the larger, | carrying its form and voice forward as the reverberation carries the sound. I know the ornithologists, with their hairsplittings, or rather feather-splittings, point out many differences, but they are unimporThe fractions may not agree, but the whole numbers are the same. tant. CHAPTER XV. THE RESCUE. HIS INHERITANCE. BY ADELINE TRAFTON. CAPTAIN ELYOT had felt little interest in the ball. He was low-spirited over the departure of the boy, whom he had taken under his care since their ride over the plains together. In his heart he was sore and almost angry that he was not to go in Orme's place. If one were to fall how much better that he should be that one rather than the lieutenant. Life held few charms for him just now, and there is a sweetness in selfsacrifice-in that kind of Enoch Arden selfsacrifice which ends in the object at last knowing all about it and being made comfortably wretched. And so, years hence, when his bones were bleaching and crumbling on the spot where he had fallen, in place of the lieutenant, he would like the lieutenant to know the cause of it. Some such fancy as this passed through his head as he sat alone smoking a solitary pipe on the night of the ball. The pipe went out. He threw it down in disgust. There was something like contempt of himself in his mind. For at this moment, though he was jealous and sore and wretched as he believed, he was by no means sure that he wanted to marry this girl. She was very fair to look at and had crept unknown to himself very close to his heart. But the captain was both cautious and proud, and by no means so far gone in his infatuation as not to be able to speculate upon the future of the man who should win the sutler's daughter. He must leave the army of that there was no question. The social ostracism which would follow such a step would be unbearable to a man of spirit. And then in one of those sudden visions, vivid as reality, only more intensified,-like the concentration of a dozen realities,-Blossom's baby face with its meek, entreating eyes rose before him, and he forgot his prejudices,forgot his pride. He could have taken her in his arms before all the world! He threw off the delusion that made her seem present for the moment. Such fancies were not in accordance with the spirit of the promise he had made to his friend. It was not well for him to sit here and brood alone over his unquiet thoughts. He would go out and seek society. As he rose up from his chair a paper at his elbow fluttered down to the floor. He had forgotten this letter which the chaplain had put into his hand as he came from the mess-room. It was only another of Uncle Jeremy's missives, which after long wandering and delay had found him out. "I have heard nothing from you since your return to your regiment," the old man wrote. "Nor have you written to Mary (which was the name of the cousin down on the Jersey shore). "There are those who would do more than this to please me, and you will find it greatly to your disadvantage if you will not do as much.” So the old man threatened him at last! He only laughed scornfully as he threw the letter aside. This affair with Uncle Jeremy which had so annoyed him a few weeks since had not the weight of a feather upon him now. He tossed the letter into his desk, but before it had left his hand he had forgotten its contents. His thoughts had sped to the ball, and he was trying to make up his mind to follow them. He had half engaged Miss Laud for the first waltz, but she would not lack partners where her sex was so sparsely represented. A strong desire to stroll down to the Stubbs's for a half hour came over him-to look in upon this little girl and see if she would still hold her own in his imagination. It would not be treachery toward his friend. Weeks had passed since he had been there alone. Besides, he could talk of the boy. Might he not in this way do him a service? Then he remembered the lieutenant to have said that Mrs. Stubbs had partly promised to take Blossom to the ball. He had hardly given it a thought at the time in his eagerness to hear what more there might be to tell of the boy's visit. Would the woman do so? Would she expose the girl to the slights and sneers which he knew the wellbred ladies at the post were capable of bestowing? How they might hurt the child! Almost before he knew it he was in the ball-room. He had fancied Blossom scorned and doomed to sit in a corner. On the contrary, she came down the room at the moment of his entrance looking as fresh as the rose in her hair. He had come prepared to dare the sneers of the entire feminine portion of the garrison, if need be, in her behalf, but it seemed there was no occasion for his services, and after a slight greeting to the girl and her mother, whom she had joined, he passed on to the upper end of the room. Poor Blossom bit her lip and could hardly keep back her tears. He had not noticed the half-extended hand nor did he dream that the glow on her face had been called up by the sight of his figure in the door-way. "Curse his pride!" muttered the woman, The captain passed on slowly up the room to the group at the head, the center of which was the major's daughter. "Where have you been?" chirruped Miss Laud, who had a young lieutenant at each elbow and was making eyes at a third just behind her shoulder. "You don't deserve to know that I saved a waltz for you till the evening was half over." "And am I too late to claim it? I have been detained," the captain said, making a bold plunge and telling a lie in sheer desperation. "Entirely too late. You should have come before, sir." The girl could afford to play the tyrant to-night, with half a dozen young men hanging about her. “We are just going." "Perhaps Miss Bryce will be more indulgent," he said, advancing to Claudia, who strove to appear unconscious and at ease as the gentlemen about her fell back at this address. Poor Claudia would have stepped down and out upon the floor with a happy heart but for this unfortunate assertion of her friend which would make compliance appear eager. Why need Kitty have said that they were about to go home? A half hour longer would make no difference, even though it were well on toward daylight. Mrs. Bryce had already risen. Claudia rose now and drew her lace shawl about her neck. "Yes, we are just going," she said. If he would only persist, she would give way. Dear me! how gladly she would have given way!-but no, he stepped back with a bow and some half intelligible words of regret, and Mrs. Bryce and her party swept down the room, and out. Their fine dresses touched Mrs. Stubbs's gown as they passed, but no one of them bestowed a glance upon her or upon the little figure with frightened eyes by her side. The woman's face grew dark as she turned to look after them. "I'll be even with you yet," she muttered behind her closed teeth; but still she made no movement to go. And now that the great lights had departed Blossom had no lack of satellites. Admiration and attention were turned to her in a way that embarrassed and almost alarmed the child. The dancing still went on though but feebly supported, and in time to music that lagged and had lost its spirit. One after another, the ladies were taking their departure. The men straggling in from the supper-room sought out and sued for a presentation to the sutler's pretty daughter. Leaning over her they breathed bold compliments in her ears too strongly perfumed with wine to be acceptable. Mrs. Stubbs sat like a sphinx, mute and unseeing. Or was the woman flattered by this late notice of the girl who smiled though her lips trembled and tears came into her eyes? Lieutenant Orme, at a little distance, looked on, angry and tempted to interfere. "Why doesn't she take her daughter home?" the boy said to himself, growing hot and cold by turns as the play went on. "Good Heavens ! What is the old woman thinking of?" he thought, as Captain Luttrell swaggered toward them. The music still rose and fell in voluptuous cadence, but one after another the dancers fell off and slipped away. All at once the woman roused herself. "Eh! Blossom," she said, starting from her stupor as though she had been dreaming and gazing with suddenly awakened eyes upon the group of men gathered about them. "What's this? It's time we were going, child." Some of the gay young fellows took it up with a hardly suppressed laugh, repeating the girl's fanciful pet name. One boldly begged the privilege of bringing her shawl. Another offered to see her safely home. "Stand out of the way, will you?"hiccoughed Capain Luttrell, elbowing himself to the front. "She'd a d― sight rather an old friend 'd serve her. Hadn't you, my dear?" leaning down toward Blossom. "Keep a civil tongue in your head or it'll be the worse for ye," retorted the widow, angrily rising up. There was something almost menacing in the movement and the little group fell back. 66 but she's a Tartar!" exclaimed one of the visitors in a low voice. "She's Tar-t'rus itself," said Captain Luttrell with a drunken laugh. At this instant Captain Elyot came out from the supper-room with one of the officers. "What's this?" said his companion; but Captain Elyot did not wait to respond. He pushed straight through the little crowd -for everybody in the room had started forward at Mrs. Stubbs's upraised voice. "So you are going? Allow me," and he stepped directly before Captain Luttrell. He only partially comprehended what had occurred, but he had caught a glimpse of Blossom, white and tearful, behind her mother's defiant form. "I will take you to the dressing-room." "By, Elyot," said Captain Luttrell, "what d'ye mean by your interference? I was just about to see these ladies home myself." "Stand out of the way, sir." And thrusting him aside with his elbow, the young man sent the drunken captain of cavalry reeling to the floor, while he conducted Mrs. Stubbs and her daughter to the dressing-room. CHAPTER XVI. SKIRMISHES. CAPTAIN LUTTRELL had forgotten his wrath by the next morning. He had forgotten, indeed, much of what had occurred toward the close of the evening before, and was somewhat ashamed of the part he had played as it was set before him by his friends, who perhaps exaggerated his misdemeanors in order to hide their own. He blustered and swore, however, which was a very harmless way of venting his anger, vowing that nothing but the fact that he was to leave at midday with the troops ordered south, prevented his demanding an apology from Captain Elyot. As it was he should be obliged to put aside personal affairs for the time. He asserted, with a great show of indignation, that he had only intended to be civil to the widow and her daughter, and if the former chose to resent his well-meant offer of service it was no fault of his, "and no reason, by, why Elyot should interfere." It was at this point in discussing the affair that he allowed himself to be soothed and suffered his anger to cool, after a list of oaths more curious than intelligible. The story of the little encounter spread through the fort and even entered the major's house before breakfast the next morning. "Dear me! Have you heard the news?" cried Miss Laud, bursting into the parlor where that meal was being set out, with her hair in a most unbecoming twist and with a wrapper thrown hastily about her form. Jinny had brought the story, with a jug of hot water, that very moment to her bedroom, having but just received it from Sergeant McDougal, who had dropped into the kitchen for a moment's gossip. |