h according to the speech of its kind. And sometimes
a cruel-eyed, hook-beaked, trim, well-bred looking hawk would perch
there on the roof--quite alone, let me tell you--and gaze around as if
wondering where all the other birds could have gone to! And once in a
while also a splendid white-headed eagle would come down out of the
blue, and wing low over the barn, and scream his thin, terrifying yelp,
as if he were hoping there might be something like spring lambs hidden
in the barn. But none of these things, affairs of the garish,
dazzling, common day, moved in the least the row of contented little
bats, all drowsing the useless hours of day away as they hung by their
toes in the soft gloom under the roof. They would wake up now and
again, to be sure, and squeak, and crowd each other a little. Or
perhaps rouse themselves enough to make a long and careful toilet,
combing their exquisitely fine fur with their delicate claws, and
passing every corner of the elastic silken membrane of their wings
daintily between their lips. But as for what went on in the gaudy
light on the outer side of the roof, it concerned them not at all.

"But Little Silk Wing seems to have been born to illustrate the dangers
which beset the life of the stay-at-home. For two days there had been
an unwonted disturbance in the deep-grassed meadow that surrounded the
barn. There had been the clanking of harness, the long, shrill,
vibrant clatter of the scarlet mowing machine, the snorting of horses,
and the shouting and laughter of men turning the fresh hay with their
forks. Then came carts and children, with shrill laughter and screams
of merriment, and the hay was hauled into the barn, load after load,
fragrant, crackling with grasshoppers; and presently the mows began to
fill up till the men with the pitchforks, sweating over the hot work of
stowing the hay, came up beneath the eaves.

"Reluctantly and indignantly the bats woke up. Some of them, as the
loads came in with noisy children on top, bestirred themselves
sufficiently to shake the sleep out of their eyes, unfold their draped
wings, flutter down into the daylight, and fly off to the peaceful
gloom of the nearest woods.

"But the mother of Little Silk Wing was not so easily disturbed. She
opened her tiny black beads of eyes as wide as she could, but gave no
other sign of having noticed the invaders of the old barn's drowsy
peace. She had seen such excitement before, and never known