found the provident mistress carefully drawing
out of the ruin some of the material she had woven into it, and carrying
it away, doubtless to add to a fresh nest. But she had this time chosen
a more secluded site, that we were unable to discover. I hope she did
not credit us with her disaster.

XXV.

A PLUM-TREE ROMANCE.

It was just after the catastrophe of the last chapter when a pair of
goldfinches, whose pretty pastoral I hoped to watch, had been robbed and
driven from their home in a maple-tree that the plum-tree romance began.
Grieving for their sorrow as well as for my loss, I turned my steps
toward the farmhouse, intending to devote part of the day to the baby
crows, who were enlivening the pasture with their droll cries and
droller actions. But the crow family had the pasture to themselves that
morning, for in passing through the orchard, looking, as always, for
indications of feathered life, I suddenly saw a new nest in the top of a
plum-tree, and my spirits rose instantly when I noticed that the busy
little architect, at that moment working upon it, was a goldfinch.

What an unfortunate place she had chosen, was my first thought. A young
tree, a mere sapling, not more than eight feet high, close beside the
regular farm road, where men, and worse, two nest-robbing boys, passed
forty times a day. Would the trim little matron, now so happy in her
plans, have any chance of bringing up a brood there in plain sight,
where, if the roving eyes of those youngsters happened to fall upon her
nest, peace would take its departure even if calamity did not overtake
her?

Looking all about, to make sure that no one was in sight, I seated
myself to make the acquaintance of my new neighbor. My whole study of
the life in and around the plum-tree, carried on for the next two weeks,
was of a spasmodic order, for I had always to take care that no spies
were about before I dared even look toward the orchard. One glimpse of
me in the neighborhood would have disclosed their secret to the sharp
boys who knew my ways.

The little dame was bewitching in her manner, and her handsome young
spouse the most devoted consort I ever saw in feathers, or out of them,
I may say. Although she alone built the nest, he was her constant
attendant, and they always made their appearance together. He dropped
into a taller tree--an apple near by--while she, with her beak full of
materials, alighted on the lowest branch of the plum, and ho