was curious. So long as
we stayed in that bit of brush, not a horse attempted to enter, though
they all browsed around outside. They avoided it as if it were haunted,
or, as my comrade said, "filled with beckoning forms." Nor was that all;
I have reason to think they never again entered that particular patch of
brush, for, some weeks after we had abandoned the study of magpies and
the pasture altogether, we found the spot transformed, as if by the wand
of enchantment. From the burned-up desert outside we stepped at once
into a miniature paradise, to our surprise, almost our consternation.
Excepting the footpaths through it, it bore no appearance of having ever
been a thoroughfare. Around the foot of every tree had grown up clumps
of ferns or brakes, a yard high, luxuriant, graceful, and exquisite in
form and color; and peeping out from under them were flowers, dainty
wildings we had not before seen there. A bit of the tropics or a gem out
of fairyland it looked to our sun and sand weary eyes. Outside were the
burning sun of June, a withering hot wind, and yellow and dead
vegetation; within was cool greenness and a mere rustle of leaves
whispering of the gale. It was the loveliest bit of greenery we saw on
the shores of the Great Salt Lake. It was marvelous; it was almost
uncanny.

Our daily trips to the pasture had ceased, and other birds and other
nests had occupied our thoughts for a week or two, when we resolved to
pay a last visit to our old haunts, to see if we could learn anything of
the magpies. We went through the pasture, led by the voices of the birds
away over to the farther side, and there, across another fenced pasture,
we heard them plainly, calling and chattering and making much noise, but
in different tones from any we had heard before. Evidently a magpie
nursery had been established over there. We fancied we could distinguish
maternal reproof and loving baby talk, beside the weaker voices of the
young, and we went home rejoicing to believe, that in spite of nest
robbers, and the fright we had given them, some young magpies were
growing up to enliven the world another summer.

XIX.

THE SECRET OF THE WILD ROSE PATH.

"Shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering Voice?"

Wordsworth's lines are addressed to the cuckoo of the Old World, a bird
of unenviable reputation, notorious for imposing his most sacred duties
upon others; naturally, therefore, one who would not court observation,
a