KNIGHTS AND CASTLES. 217 



foreign interloper ! The sparrow was a bully and a tyrant over all 

 the other birds, but he learned that the martins were his masters. 



However, when winter came and the air was frosty, the empty 

 martin houses were too inviting to be resisted. Back the spar- 

 rows went, and who would leave earlier in the spring than he 

 had to ? They always forgot to leave until the day the martins 

 came and they were whipped into ignominious retreat, their 

 nests, eggs, and half-fledged young being pitched out after them. 



Nor were these bloodless encounters. They were battles 

 royal to be sung by Homers of the swallow tribe, each hero 

 called by name ; for here was foughten field, beleaguered 

 castle, the storming of a citadel, the rout of the entrenched 

 where those unarmed and unprotected fought against stout 

 and well-armed ruffians sheltered behind walls that could not 

 be breached nor broken. The best and most knightly tales 

 we can remember are scarcely too grand to be compared with 

 this story of some little birds fighting for a toy house stuck 

 up on a pole. I am wholly serious in admiring them. These 

 battles lasted two or three days, as much, in proportion 

 to the length of their lives, as two or three weeks would 

 be to a man. We think that perhaps the pulls and pecks 

 and pinches did not hurt, they being birds ; but these 

 were battles to the utterance; these birds killed each other. 

 At one of the two martin houses nearest my home, one 

 year two dead sparrows and two dead martins were found 

 on the ground — perhaps a fifth of all those engaged in 

 the fight; and at the other house I am told that more were 

 killed, though not more in proportion to the contestants. 

 The martins always were victorious. The only time when 

 they were not completely so, was once when the colony was 

 so small that they could occupy only the upper stories of the 

 house, when they permitted the sparrows to build below them. 



