sed with its
attractiveness. Thinking I had lingered long enough, I turned away and
clambered up the rocky wall below the falls towards the road above. As I
did so, a loud, bell-like song rang above the roar of the water. On
looking down into the ravine, I saw a mouse-colored bird, a little
smaller than the robin, his tail perked up almost vertically, scuttling
about on the rocks below and dipping his body in an expressive way like
the "tip-up" sandpiper. Having read about this bird, I at once
recognized it as the water-ousel. My interest in everything else
vanished. This was one of the birds I had made my pilgrimage to the
Rockies to study. It required only a few minutes to scramble down into
the ravine again.

Breathlessly I watched the little bird. Its queer teetering is like that
of some of the wrens, accentors, and water-thrushes. Now it ran to the
top of a rock and stood dipping and eying me narrowly, flirting its
bobby tail; now it flew to one of the steep, almost vertical walls of
rock and scrambled up to a protuberance; then down again to the water;
then, to my intense delight, it plunged into the limpid stream, and came
up the next moment with a slug or water-beetle in its bill. Presently it
flew over to the opposite wall, its feet slipping on the wet rocks, and
darted into a small crevice just below the foot of the falls, gave a
quick poke with its beak and flitted away--minus the tidbit it had held
in its bill.

_RAINBOW FALLS_

_When the sun strikes the spray and mist at the proper angle, a
beautiful rainbow is painted on the face of the falls. At the time of
the author's visit to this idyllic spot a pair of water-ousels had
chosen it for a summer residence. They flew from the rocks below to the
top of the falls, hugging close to the rushing torrent. In returning,
they darted in one swift plunge from the top to the bottom, alighting on
the rocks below. With the utmost abandon they dived into the seething
waters at the foot of the falls, usually emerging with a slug or beetle
in their bills for the nestlings. Shod with tall rubber boots, the
writer waded close up to the foot of the falls in search of the dipper's
nest, which was set in a cleft of the rocks a few inches above the
water, in the little shadowed cavern at the left of the stream. The
pointed rock wrapped in mist, almost in the line of the plunging tide,
was a favorite perch for the dippers._

[Illustration]

Ah! my propitious stars shone o