that things were nearly balanced.

His flight in search of food had daily led him farther on, till he
had discovered and explored the Rosedale Creek, with its banks of
silver-birch, and Castle Frank, with its grapes and rowan berries, as
well as Chester woods, where amelanchier and Virginia-creeper swung
their fruit-bunches, and checkerberries glowed beneath the snow.

He soon found out that for some strange reason men with guns did not go
within the high fence of Castle Frank. So among these scenes he lived
his life, learning new places, new foods, and grew wiser and more
beautiful every day.

He was quite alone so far as kindred were concerned, but that scarcely
seemed a hardship. Wherever he went he could see the jolly chickadees
scrambling merrily about, and he remembered the time when they had
seemed such big, important creatures. They were the most absurdly
cheerful things in the woods. Before the autumn was fairly over they had
begun to sing their famous refrain, 'Spring Soon,' and kept it up with
good heart more or less all through the winter's direst storms, till
at length the waning of the Hunger Moon, our February, seemed really
to lend some point to the ditty, and they redoubled their optimistic
announcement to the world in an 'I-told-you-so' mood. Soon good support
was found, for the sun gained strength and melted the snow from the
southern slope of Castle Frank Hill, and exposed great banks of fragrant
wintergreen, whose berries were a bounteous feast for Redruff, and,
ending the hard work of pulling frozen browse, gave his bill the needed
chance to grow into its proper shape again. Very soon the first bluebird
came flying over and warbled as he flew 'The spring is coming.' The
sun kept gaining, and early one day in the dark of the Wakening Moon of
March there was a loud 'Caw, caw,' and old Silver-spot, the king-crow,
came swinging along from the south at the head of his troops and
officially announced,

'THE SPRING HAS COME'

All nature seemed to respond to this, the opening of the birds' New
Year, and yet it was something within that chiefly seemed to move them.
The chickadees went simply wild; they sang their 'Spring now, spring now
now--Spring now now,' so persistently that one wondered how they found
time to get a living.

And Redruff felt it thrill him through and through. He sprang with
joyous vigor on a stump and sent rolling down the little valley, again
and again, a thundering 'Thump, thum