the
day when the first of the young birds bade good-by to its cradle, I had
gone into the house, leaving my fellow-observer in the orchard, with a
charge to call me if anything noteworthy should happen. I was hardly
seated before he whistled loudly, and I hastened out again. Another
hummer had been there, he said, and the mother had been chasing him (or
her) about in a frantic manner; and even while we were talking, the
scene was re-enacted. The stranger had returned, and the two birds were
shooting hither and thither through the trees, the widow squeaking and
spreading her tail at a prodigious rate. The new-comer did not alight
(it couldn't), and there was no determining its sex. It may have been
the recreant husband and father, unable longer to deny himself a look at
his bairns,--who knows? Or it may have been some bachelor or widower who
had come a-wooing. One thing is certain,--husband, lover, or inquisitive
stranger, he had no encouragement to come again.

[13] These two humming-bird papers were printed in consecutive numbers
of _The Atlantic Monthly_, June and July, 1891.

As if to heighten the dramatic interest of our studies (I come now to
the promised mystery), we had already had the singular good fortune to
find a male humming-bird who seemed to be stationed permanently in a
tall ash-tree, standing by itself in a recent clearing, at a distance of
a mile or more from our widow's orchard. Day after day, for at least a
fortnight (from the 2d to the 15th of July), he remained there. One or
both of us went almost daily to call upon him, and, as far as we could
make out, he seldom absented himself from his post for five minutes
together! What was he doing? At first, in spite of his sex, it was hard
not to believe that his nest was in the tree; and to satisfy himself, my
companion "shinned" it, schoolboy fashion,--a frightful piece of work,
which put me out of breath even to look at it,--while I surveyed the
branches from all sides through an opera-glass. All was without avail.
Nothing was to be seen, and it was as good as certain, the branches
being well separated, and easily overlooked, that there was nothing
there.

Four days later I set out alone, to try my luck with the riddle. As I
entered the clearing, the hummer was seen at his post, and my suspicions
fastened upon a small wild apple-tree, perhaps twenty rods distant. I
went to examine it, and presently the bird followed me. He perched in
its top, but seem