aa ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



after excitedly hailing me and flirting his feathers for 

 a few moments he would fly away. 



Gradually I grew reconciled to my loss, for, though 

 no longer my captive — my own bird — he was near 

 me, living in the plantation and frequently seen. 

 Often and often, at intervals of a few or of many 

 days, when my lost, yet not wholly lost, cardinal was 

 not in my mind, I would come upon him, sometimes 

 out on the plain, feeding with a flock of purple cow- 

 birds, or yellow-breasted troupials, or some other 

 species; and when they would all rise up and fly 

 away at my approach, he alone, after going a little 

 distance with them, would drop out of the crowd and 

 pitch on a stalk or thistle-bush, just, as it would 

 appear, to look at me and hail me with his loud note 

 — to say that he remembered me still; then off he 

 would fly after the others. 



That little action of his went far to reconcile me 

 to his loss — to endear him still more to me, changing 

 my boyish bitterness to a new and strange kind of 

 delight in his happiness. 



But the end of the story is not yet: even at this 

 distance, after so many changing and hardening years, 

 I experience a certain reluctance or heaviness of 

 heart in telling it. 



The warm bright months went by and it was 

 winter again — the cold season from May to August, 

 when the trees are bare, the rainy south wind blows, 

 and there are frosty nights, frosts that would some- 

 times last all day or even several days. Then it was 

 that I missed my bird and wondered often what had 



