grily.
Then, turning toward us, she came like an arrow straight at the young
lady, a bright plume in whose hat probably drew her fire. The damsel
gathered up her skirts about her and beat a hasty retreat. Hawks were
not so pretty as she thought they were. A large hawk launched at one's
face from high in the air is calculated to make one a little nervous. It
is such a fearful incline down which the bird comes, and she is aiming
exactly toward your eye. When within about thirty feet of you, she turns
upward with a rushing sound, and, mounting higher, falls toward you
again. She is only firing blank cartridges, as it were; but it usually
has the desired effect, and beats the enemy off.

After we had inspected the young hawks, a neighbor of my friend offered
to conduct us to a quail's nest. Anything in the shape of a nest is
always welcome, it is such a mystery, such a centre of interest and
affection, and, if upon the ground, is usually something so dainty and
exquisite amid the natural wreckage and confusion. A ground nest seems
so exposed, too, that it always gives a little thrill of pleasurable
surprise to see the group of frail eggs resting there behind so slight a
barrier. I will walk a long distance any day just to see a song
sparrow's nest amid the stubble or under a tuft of grass. It is a jewel
in a rosette of jewels, with a frill of weeds or turf. A quail's nest I
had never seen, and to be shown one within the hunting-ground of this
murderous hawk would be a double pleasure. Such a quiet, secluded,
grass-grown highway as we moved along was itself a rare treat.
Sequestered was the word that the little valley suggested, and peace the
feeling the road evoked. The farmer, whose fields lay about us, half
grown with weeds and bushes, evidently did not make stir or noise enough
to disturb anything. Beside this rustic highway, bounded by old mossy
stone walls, and within a stone's throw of the farmer's barn, the quail
had made her nest. It was just under the edge of a prostrate thorn-bush.

"The nest is right there," said the farmer, pausing within ten feet of
it, and pointing to the spot with his stick.

In a moment or two we could make out the mottled brown plumage of the
sitting bird. Then we approached her cautiously till we bent above her.

She never moved a feather.

Then I put my cane down in the brush behind her. We wanted to see the
eggs, yet did not want rudely to disturb the sitting hen.

She would not mo