a joint behind.
He knew his blackbird, it seemed.

Blackie flew away to his nest, but not to a nest in a hedge. To dwell
in a hedge was a rule of his clan, but the devil a rule did he obey.
Nests in hedges for other blackbirds, perhaps. He, or his wife, had
different notions. Wherefore flew he away out into the grass field
behind the garden. Men had been making excavations there, for what mad
man-purpose troubled him not--digging a drain or something. No matter.

Into the excavation he slipped---very, very secretly, so that nobody
could have seen him go there--and down to the far end, where, twelve
feet below the surface, on a ledge of wood, where the sides were shored
with timber, his mate had her nest. Here he delivered over his carved
joints to the three ugly creatures which he knew as his children and
thought the world of, and appeared next flying low and quickly back to
the garden. That is to say, he had contrived to slip from the nest so
secretly that that was the first time he showed.

A sparrow-hawk, worried with a family of her own, took occasion to
chase him as he flew, and he arrived in among the young lime-trees that
backed the garden, switchbacking--that was one of his tricks of escape,
made possible by a long tail--and yelling fit to raise the world. The
sparrow-hawk's skinny yellow claw, thrust forward, was clutching thin
air an inch behind his central tail-feathers, but that was all she got
of him--just thin air. There was no crash as he hurled into the green
maze; but she, failing to swerve exactly in time, made a mighty crash,
and retired somewhat dazed, thankful that she retained two whole wings
to fly with. There is no room for big-winged sparrow-hawks in close
cover, anyway, and Blackie, who was born to the leafy green ways, knew
that.

Blackie's yells had called up, as if by magic, a motley crowd of
chaffinches, hedge-sparrows, wrens, robins, &c., from nowhere at all,
and they could be seen whirling in skirmishing order--not too
close--about the retreating foe. Blackie himself needed no more
sparrow-hawk for a bit, and preferred to sit and look on. If the
little fools chose to risk their lives in the excitement of mobbing,
let them. His business was too urgent.

Twenty lightning glances around seemed to show that no death was on the
lurk near by. Also, a quick inspection of other birds' actions--he
trusted to them a good deal--appeared to confirm this.

Then he flew down to the