all
lump of mortar, which woke up the owl with a start.

"Who-hoo-hoo-hoo?" shouted the master of the house.

"Who-who tu-who-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo?" shouted the mistress.

"Ciss-s-s--phistle--phut-snap," chorused the juveniles, who had been
disturbed by their mamma, treading upon one, scratching another on the
side of the head, and giving number three such a crack with her wing
that the little fellow was knocked out of the nest into an old sooty
part of the chimney, and came back such a little guy that his mother
hardly knew him.

"Who-who-oo-oo-oo?" said the owl again.

"`Who? who? who?' why, whom do you suppose, but all your cousins of
Featherland, come to give you a call?" said the magpie.

Whereupon the old gentleman came forth in a very dignified way, with his
wife's spectacles on his nose, and then, because he could not see a bit,
stood winking and blinking and nodding his great head, and bowing, and
sticking up his feathers, like a stupid old turkey-cock, till he looked
so majestic and imposing, that it was decided at once that he must come
into the cedar and try the foreigner, who would not have a chance to get
off with such a judge before him.

Off went the owl with a heavy flap-flap, and across the garden to where
the great cedar stood; and away went the birds with such a flutter,
rustle, and bustle, that the whole air whistled again as they swept
away.

"Now, then, bolster-brains," said the starling to the jackdaw, "why,
you've been asleep!" And there, sure enough, had sat the daw with his
head in his pocket, and one leg put away for the present until he wanted
it again.

"Asleep! nonsense!" said the daw. "Pooh--tchah! who ever heard of such
a thing? Only thinking, my dear sir--only thinking; and I think so much
better with my eyes shut and the light shaded from them."

"Why, you depraved descendant of a corvine ancestor; you grey-headed old
miscreant," exclaimed the blackbird, who had been to look at the
prisoner, "what have you done with the foreigner?"

"Done," said the daw, "done with the foreigner! No, of course I have
not done with the foreigner, any more than the rest of the company
have."

"But where is he?" chorused several birds; "where is he?"

"Ah!" said Judge Shoutnight, "who-oo-oo--ere's the prisoner?"

Over the hills and far away, with voice cleared by sucking the little
birds' eggs, and crying "Cuckoo," till the far-off woods rang back the
echo from their golden green sid