ng her material in place as I climbed up the steep bank to inspect
her work. Then she flew away, making no demonstration while I examined
the nest.

Having eaten our breakfast at the miner's cabin, my youthful companion
and I mounted our "gayly caparisoned steeds," and resumed our journey
toward Gray's Peak. The birds just mentioned greeted us with their
salvos as we crept along. It was not until we had almost reached the
timber-line that Gray's Peak loomed in sight, solemn and majestic,
photographed against the cobalt sky, with its companion-piece, Torrey's
Peak, standing sullen beside it. The twin peaks were pointed out to us
by another miner whom we met at his shack just a little below the
timber-line, and who obligingly gave us permission to "bunk" in one of
the cabins of what is known as "Stephen's mine," which is now
abandoned--or was at the time of our visit. Near the timber-line, where
the valley opens to the sunlight, we found a mountain bluebird flitting
about some old, deserted buildings, but, strangely enough, this was the
last time we saw him, although we looked for him again and again. Nor
did we see another mountain blue in this alpine eyrie.

Our burros were tethered for the day in a grassy hollow, our effects
stowed away in the cabin aforesaid, which we had leased for a few days;
then, with luncheon strapped over our shoulders and butterfly net and
field-glass in hand, we started happily up the valley afoot toward the
summit of our aspirations, Gray's Peak, rising fourteen thousand four
hundred and forty-one feet above the level of the sea. In some scrubby
pine bushes above timber-line several Audubon's warblers were flitting
and singing, living hard by the white fields of snow. Still farther up
the hollow Wilson's warblers were trilling blithely, proclaiming
themselves yet more venturesome than their gorgeous cousins, the
Audubons. There is reason for this difference, for Wilson's warblers
nest in willows and other bushes which thrive on higher ground and
nearer the snowy zone than do the pines to which Audubon's warblers are
especially attached. At all events, _Sylvania pusilla_ was one of the
two species which accompanied us all the way from Georgetown to the foot
of Gray's Peak, giving us a kind of "personally conducted" journey.

Our other brave escorts were the white-crowned sparrows, which pursued
the narrowing valleys until they were merged into the snowy gorges that
rive the sides of the towe