SAM BLACK 209 



must be there, for Dan Scott had told us so and Dan 

 Scott was authority on all the ghosts, goblins and stinging 

 things in the country. 



Old Jim Crow, whose sharp eye saw all that went on in 

 the woods, evidently had observed that tho we children 

 ran at large in this grove at all hours of the day we 

 avoided the crabapple thicket. When the first warm sun 

 began to melt the snow he began to call from every tree top 

 for a mate to come and live with him in our crabapple 

 thicket. Before the first young fox squirrels were nibbling 

 the seeds in the white elms, he had won a dusky bride and 

 they had taken possession of the crabapple thicket. 



From our grapevine playhouse sister and I watched 

 them with considerable interest. Back and forth they 

 went, each trip bringing a stick for their nest. The crow 

 carries large sticks, so it was not uncommon for them to 

 bring sticks twelve or fifteen inches long and as thick as 

 my finger. We could see the nest growing from day to 

 day. but we never dared to venture close enough to see 

 the details of the nest building. For three days this work 

 went forward rapidly. The fourth day we observed that 

 they were carying not sticks any more but pieces of string 

 or some other lining material. When the nest was fin- 

 ished it was fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter and was 

 securely wedged in a crotch of crabapple branches where 

 the top was thickest. It was not more than ten feet from 

 the ground but the limbs were so thick beneath, above, and 

 on all sides that had we not known where it was it is doubt- 

 ful if we could have found it. By this time the warm 

 breezes had started the leaves, the tree had burst into a 

 blaze of pink blossoms, and these blossoms and half formed 

 leaves hid the nest. 



