ur first visit:
on our second we found some dire misfortune had befallen the mother,
the children and the nest. The Hofbauer feared some servant must
have destroyed them. The poor little father remained attached to the
melancholy spot, and, refusing to be comforted because his dear ones
were not, flew round perpetually with a worm in his bill. In his
despair he would drop it untouched with piteous laments, until, as if
his small instinct had become crazed, he would go in search of a fresh
dainty morsel, and the sad scene was enacted over again. Poor forlorn
bird! Like the swallows, the redstarts are dedicated to the Virgin:
such high patronage, however, in this case availed nothing.

Neither did Anton's crossbill, which dwelt in the stube, have a much
happier fate. Although its master was very fond of it and tended it
well, it had, like others of its race, to live in a very small prison
suspended but a short way from the centre of the dark paneled ceiling.
Thus, in the winter between our two visits it died, suffocated by the
hot air of the overheated, ill-ventilated stube. Many poor pet birds
of this species are thus killed, the victims of ignorance; for when
a crossbill becomes sickly from its dark, hot, confined quarters, the
peasant does not wish to cure it, believing that this holy bird, which
tried to free the Lord from the cross, so sympathizes with redeemed
humanity that whenever illness or epidemic threatens the household the
devoted creature itself immediately takes the disease and dies, the
family escaping unharmed.

It would be wearisome to enumerate all the different features and
dispositions of the farm-yard inhabitants. Let us rather pass on to
Moro. Perhaps it was no pleasant surprise to some of us when the Hof
bauer having made the purchase of a house-dog, it proved to be none
other than a large, handsome rusty-black hound which had once sprung
out of a house near a crossing of the new railway, trying to attack
my father, who had to defend himself with his stick against the
disagreeable customer, until a voice from the house made the dog
instantly and quietly shrink away. The Hofbauer expressed his regret.
He, knowing nothing of the circumstances, had bought the animal out
of good-nature, as his master, an Italian and the overseer of the
railway, removing to a great distance, was forced to part with it. He
was anything but a savage dog, proving, on the contrary, easily cowed;
so that the fact of his ev