e boys passed,
and Blackie once more executed the magic of getting into his nest
without seeming to do so. And here he stayed. Dusk was setting in,
and his young were fourteen days old. They showed it in their
disobedience, and were not in the least inclined to keep as quiet as
they should, considering their father had but just warned them, in his
own way, to "lie doggo," because of the gray shape he had seen sliding
out into the field, a gray shape which was a cat.

They were more like thrushes than blackbirds, those youngsters, with
their speckly fawn breasts; and they were not like the adults of either
in their frog-like attitudes and heavy ways. Frankly, they were not
beautiful, even at that stage; and a fortnight before, when they had
been larger than the eggs they had come out of, they were positively
reptilian and repulsive.

Blackie said the blackbird equivalent to "Be quiet, you little fools!"
as quietly and as sternly as he could three or four times, and perched
on the top of a wheelbarrow to watch the gray shadow which was a cat.
That sudden death, however, was more afraid of the open than Blackie,
even, and, moreover, wasn't expecting blackbirds' nests in the middle
of fields. It turned back; and at length Mrs. Blackie, who had been on
a general survey round about to see what foes of the night were on the
move--and a fine hubbub she had made in the process--came home,
reporting all well.

Then they slept; at least, they ceased to be any further seen or heard.
Think, however, how you would sleep if every few minutes you could hear
sounds in your house one-third of which were probably the noises of a
burglar. Think, also, how you would feel if you knew that that burglar
was a murderer, and that that murderer was, in all likelihood, looking
for you, or some one just like you. Yet those birds were happy enough,
I fancy.

It was barely pale gray. It was cold and wan and washed, and
wonderfully clean and sweet, and wet with dews, when a lark climbed
invisibly into the sky and suddenly burst into song, next morning.
There was something strange and out of place, in a way, in this song,
breaking out of the night; and as it and another continued to break the
utter silence for ten minutes, it seemed rather as if it were still
night, and not really dawn at all. Dawn appeared to be waiting for
something else to give it authority, so to speak, and at the end of ten
minutes that something else came--the slim