turning, how they build their nests, and all
their likings and their antipathies--the causes which influence their
selection and abandonment of a peculiar locality, the meaning of their
songs--ay, and they are full of meaning--of welcome, of sorrow, of love,
and of despair? None like an Engadiner for all this! Few would have the
patience, fewer still the requisite gifts of acuteness, with uncommon
powers of eye and ear--of eye to discern the tints of plumage among the
dark leaves of the pine-forest--of ear to catch and imitate the notes of
each tribe, so that birds themselves should answer to the sounds.

The Engadiner stirred not from his hiding-place the whole day; he
watched the moving throng passing to and from the village church; he
saw the Bauers pass by, some in the Sunday "waggons," their horses gaily
caparisoned, with huge scarlet tassels beneath their necks, and great
wide traces all studded with little copper nails; and the more humble,
on foot, the men dressed in their light Bavarian blue, and the women
clad in a coarser stuff of the same colour, their wealth being all
centred in one strange head-dress of gold and silver filigree, which,
about the size and shape of a peacock's tail when expanded, is attached
to the back of the head--an unwieldy contrivance, which has not the
merit of becomingness; it neither affords protection against sun or
rain, and is so inconvenient, that when two peasant women walk together
they have to tack and beat, like ships in a narrow channel; and not
unfrequently, like such craft, run foul of each other after all.

The Engadiner watched these evidences of affluence, such as his wild
mountains had nothing to compare with, and yet his heart coveted none of
them. They were objects of his wonder, but no more; while every desire
was excited to possess the little bird, whose cage hung scarcely three
yards from where he lay.

As evening drew nigh, the Engadiner became almost feverish in
excitement: each stir within the house made him fear that some one was
coming to take the bird away; every step that approached suggested the
same dread. Twice he resolved to tear himself from the spot, and pursue
his journey; but each time some liquid note, some thrilling cadence,
fell like a charm upon his ear, and he sank down spell-bound. He sat for
a long time with eyes rivetted on the cage, and then at length, stooping
down, he took from the ground beside him a long branch of pine-wood; he
measur