mother.
Seeing her infant at liberty, she slipped back into the woods and
resumed the calls, which sounded so remarkably like tapping, while he
started up the road, answering; and thus I left them.

Several times after that, I heard from the woods--for

"The cuckoo delights in the cool leafy shadows
Where the nest and its treasures are rocked by the breeze"--

the same strange calling of a cuckoo mother, a weird, unearthly,
knocking sound, not in the least like the ordinary "kuk! kuk!" of the
bird. I should never have suspected that it was anything but the tap of
an unusually cautious woodpecker, if I had not caught her at it that
night.

On the sixth evening after I had thought myself bereaved of the shrikes,
I went out for a walk with my friend, and we turned our steps into the
lonely road. As we approached the thorn, what was my surprise to see the
shrike in his old place on the fence, and, after waiting a few minutes,
to see his mate go to the ground for her lunch, as if nothing had
happened!

Then they had not deserted! But how and why all life about the nest had
been suspended for one hour on the Fourth of July is a puzzle to this
day. However it may have happened, I was delighted to find the birds
safe, and at once resumed my study; going out the next morning as usual,
staying some hours, and again toward night for another visit.

Now I was sure it must be time for the young to be out, for I knew
positively that the bird had been sitting fourteen days, and twenty-one
days had passed since she was frightened off her nest twice in one day.

I redoubled my vigilance, but I saw no change in the manners of the pair
till the morning of July 12th. All night there had been a heavy
downpour, and the morning broke dismally, with strong wind and a
drizzling rain. I knew the lonely road would be most unattractive, but
no vagaries of wind or weather could keep me away at this crisis. I
found it all that I had anticipated--and more. The clay soil was cut up
from fence to fence by cows' feet, and whether it presented an unbroken
puddle or a succession of small ones made by the hoof-prints, it was
everywhere so slippery that retaining one's footing was no slight task,
and of course there was no pretense of a sidewalk. Add to this the
difficulty of holding an umbrella against the fierce gusts, and it may
be imagined that my pathway that morning was not "strewn with roses."

[Sidenote: _STUDY UNDER DIFFICULTIES._]