st night, but I met my
match, and something more. I said I'd make any man a sergeant who was
smart enough for that, and I must keep my word."

And he did so that very day.

FOOTNOTES:

1 All purely Russian names end either in "off" or "in," the
"ski's" being all Polish, and the "ko's" all Cossack.

THE SONG OF THE WREN.

BY MRS. MARGARET EYTINGE.

[Illustration: BIRDIE AND HER LITTLE FRIENDS.]

In a certain wild but beautiful country place, far from this great
city, stood a little white cottage all by itself, there being no other
house for ten or twelve miles, over which, in summer-time, the wild
rose vines clambered until they reached the very chimney, where,
clinging to the red bricks, they flung out in merry triumph slender
flower-laden branches like pennons on the breeze. Under the cottage
eaves some swallows built their nests every spring, and to the garden
came, as soon as the yellow and white honeysuckles and blue larkspurs
and many-colored four-o'clocks bloomed, myriads of humming-birds,
looking like rubies, and diamonds, and opals, and emeralds, and topazes,
and sapphires, that had taken to themselves wings, and flown from all
parts of the world to visit the living gems in this lovely spot. In the
autumn, when the leaves, dressed in their gayest dress, were bidding
farewell to the sunshine and the wind and each other, hundreds of
robin-redbreasts--"God's birds"--hopped like little flames about the
ground, and in a hollow tree near the cottage door a pretty red-brown
wren and his mate had found shelter for a long time, and reared several
broods. As for the saucy, chattering, busy, fearless sparrows, they had
feather-lined nests wherever a sparrow's nest could be placed, and that
is almost everywhere--on the pump, behind the wood-pile, in the barn,
among the trees--and these nests they never forsook all the year round.
What wonder that the cottage was called Bird House, and the dear wee
girl whose home it was answered to the name of Birdie? No brothers or
sisters had the innocent, blue-eyed child, and, save the birds, no
little friends. But they loved her dearly, and were always near her; so
she never grew lonely, but was happy and contented from morning until
night. At early dawn, when a soft light in the eastern sky told that the
sun was coming, they tapped on her window-panes to waken her; and when
she appeared at the cottage door, they flew to meet her, lighting on her
fair head, her should