ch seemed to settle the question of ownership. The
next day and the next this experience was repeated, and then the news
was brought to me in the woods.

[Sidenote: _A LONELY ROAD._]

It was a lonely road, leading to nothing except a pasture and a distant
farm or two, and the presence of a member of the human race was almost
as rare as it was in the forest itself. On one side stretched a pasture
with high rail fence; on the other, a meadow guarded by barbed wire. A
traveler over this uninviting way soon left the last house in the
village behind, and then the only human dwellings in sight were some
deserted farm buildings on a hill a mile or more away. Not a tree
offered grateful shade, and not a bush relieved the bare monotony of
this No Thoroughfare.

But it had its full share of feathered residents. Just beyond the last
house, a wren, bubbling over with joy, always poured out his enchanting
little song as I passed. Under the deep grass of the meadow dwelt
bobolinks and meadow larks; from the pasture rose the silver threadlike
song of the savanna sparrow and the martial note of the kingbird.
Occasionally I had a call from a family of flickers, or golden-wings,
from the woods beyond the pasture; the four young ones naive and
imperative in their manners, bowing vehemently, with emphatic "peauk"
that seemed to demand the reason of my presence in their world; while
the more experienced elders uttered their low "ka-ka-ka," whether of
warning to the young or of pride in their spirit one could only guess. A
hard-working oriole papa, with a peremptory youngster in tow, now and
then appeared in the pasture; and swallows, both barn and eave, came in
merry, chattering flocks from their homes at the edge of the village.

About the middle of the long stretch of road was a solitary maple-tree,
and about thirty feet from it, and just within the pasture fence, the
thorn, and the nest of my hopes. Approaching quietly on that first
morning, I unfolded my camp-chair and sat down in the shade of the
maple. The thorn-tree before me was perhaps fifteen feet high. It
divided near the ground into two branches, which drew apart, bent over,
and became nearly horizontal at their extremities. On one of these main
stems, near the end, where it was not more than an inch and a half in
diameter, with neither cross-branch nor twig to make it secure, was
placed the nest. It was a large structure, at least twice the size of a
robin's nest, made appa