ough
for pleasure by the way. He and May had worked busily to bring up a
family of five fine sons and daughters early in the summer; and now that
their children were able to look out for themselves, there was no reason
why the birds should not have some idle, care-free hours.

[Illustration: _It was time for the Feast of the Vagabonds._]

Besides, it was time for the Feast of the Vagabonds, a ceremony that
must be performed during the first weeks of the Migrant Flight; for it
is a custom of the bobolinks, come down to them through no one knows how
many centuries, to hold a farewell feast before leaving North America.
If you will glance at a map of the Bobolink Route, you will see the
names of the states they passed through. Our travelers did not know
these names; but for all that, they found the Great Rice Trail and
followed it. They found wild rice in the swamps of Maryland and the
neighboring states. In South Carolina they found acres of cultivated
rice. For rice is the favorite food during the Feast of the Vagabonds,
and to them Nature has a special way of serving it. This same grain is
eaten in many lands; taken in one way or another, it is said to be the
principal food of about one half of all the people in the world. Bob
didn't eat his in soup or pudding or chop-suey. He used neither spoon
nor chop-sticks. He took his in the good old-fashioned way of his own
folk--unripe, as most of us take our sweet corn, green and in the
tender, milky stage, fresh from the stalk. He had been having a rather
heavy meat diet in Maine, the meadow insects being abundant, and he
relished the change. There was doubtless a good healthy reason for the
ceremony of the Feast of the Vagabonds, as anyone who saw Bob may have
guessed; for by the time he left South Carolina he was as fat as butter.

In following the Great Rice Trail, Bob went over the same road that he
had taken the spring before when he was northward bound; but one could
hardly believe him to be the same bird, for he looked different and he
acted differently. In the late summer, the departing bird was dull of
hue and, except for a few notes that once in a great while escaped him,
like some nearly forgotten echo of the spring, he had no more music in
him than his mate, May. And when they went southward, they went all
together--the fathers and mothers and sons and daughters in one great
company.

In the spring it had all been different: Bob had come north with his
vagabond