hing only a few
feet away. She would come ambling along in the pretty wren fashion, with
her tail over her back; creeping down the side of a lath, running behind
a rafter, scolding as though to make conversation, and then winding down
to the nest through a crack. One day she hesitated, and waited to spy at
me, since I had thought it polite to stare at her! When satisfied, she
hopped along from beam to beam, her bright eyes still upon me. Then her
mate joined her. He had been suspicious of me at our first meeting, but
apparently had changed his mind, for, seeing his spouse hesitate, he
glanced at me unconcernedly, as much as to say, "Is she all you're
waiting for?" and flew out, leaving her to my tender mercies. She hopped
meekly into the bag after that rebuke, but stretched up to peer at me
once more before settling down inside.

One day when I looked in to see how wren matters were progressing, to my
amazement and horror, instead of my wren's nest I found another, high in
the mouth of the bag with one fresh egg in it! The egg was a linnet's,
and the nest had been built right on top of the wren's. Such a stench
came from the bag that I took out the upper nest and found the four
little wrens dead in their crib.

[Illustration: The Nosebag Nest.

(Vigors's Wren.)]

I had become very fond of the winsome mother bird, and so much
interested in her brood that this horrid discovery came like a tragedy
in the family of a friend.

And what did it all mean? Unless the old wrens had been dead, could the
linnets have gotten possession? The wrens were usually able to hold
their own in a discussion. If the nestlings had been alive, would the
linnets--would any bird--have built upon them, deliberately burying them
alive? It seemed too diabolical. On the other hand, what could have
killed the little wrens and left them in the nest? If they had been dead
when the linnets came to build, how could the birds have chosen such a
sepulchre for a building site?

Grieving over my little friends, I cleaned out the nosebag and hung it
up on its peg. Three weeks later I discovered, to my great perplexity,
that a pair of wrens had built in the bottom of the bag and had one egg
in the nest. Now, was this the same pair of birds that had built there
before, and if so, what did it all mean?

XV.

HOW I HELPED BUILD A NEST.

THEY picked out their crack in the oak and began to build without any
advice from me, winning little gray-cres