s on the opposite slope. A male and
a female cardinal flew up also, balancing themselves on sprays of
the blackberry, and uttering excitedly their quick call-notes. I
whistled to the male as I had been used, and he recognized me
by shooting up his crest and hopping to nearer twigs with louder
inquiry. All at once, as if an idea had struck him, he sprang
across to the spot where the first frightened male had disappeared.
I could still hear him under the vines, and presently he reappeared
and flew up into a locust-tree on the farther edge of the basin,
followed by the other. What had taken place or took place then I
do not know; but I wished he might be saying: "My son, that man
over there is the one who was very good to your mother and me last
winter, and who owns the tree you were born in. I have warned
you, of course, never to trust Man; but I would advise you, when
you have found your sweetheart, to give he a trial, and take her
to his cedar-trees."

If he said anything like this, it certainly had a terrible effect
of the son; for, having mounted rapidly to the tree-top, he clove
the blue with his scarlet wings as though he were flying from death.
I lost sight of him over a corn-field. One fact pleased me: the
father retuned to his partner under the briers, for he is not of
the lower sort who forget the mother when the children are reared.
They hold faithfully together during the ever more silent, ever more
shadowy autumn days; his warming breast is close to hers through
frozen winter nights; and if they both live to see another May she
is still all the world to him, and woe to any brilliant vagabond
who should warble a wanton love-song under her holy windows.

Georgiana returned the last of August. The nest morning she was
at her window, looking across into my yard. I was obliged to pass
that way, and welcomed her gayly, expressing my thanks for the
letter.

"I had to come back, you see," she said, with calm simplicity. I
lingered awkwardly, stripping upward the stalks of some weeds.

"Very few Kentucky birds are migratory," I replied at length, with
desperate brilliancy and an overwhelming grimace.

"I shall go back some time--to say," she said, and turned away with
a parting faintest smile.

I that West Point brother giving trouble? If so, the sooner a war
breaks out and he gets killed, the better. One thing is certain:
if, for the next month, fruit and flowers will give Georgiana any
pleasure