THE BOOK: AN APOLOGY 9 



my home for wliom I had hltlc love. He was a greedy 

 rascal, a petty rural magistrate with an itching palm, 

 and if justice was required at his hands it had to be 

 bought with money like any other commodity. One 

 summer afternoon he rode over to my home and asked 

 me to go for a walk with him by the river. It was a 

 warm brilliant day in early autumn, and when we had 

 walked about a couple of miles along the bank to a spot 

 where the stream was about fifty yards wide, we sat 

 down on the dry grass under a large red willow. A 

 flock of birds was in the tree — a species of a most 

 loquacious kind — but our approach had made them silent. 

 Not the faintest chirp fell from the branches that had 

 been full of their musical jangle a few minutes before. 

 It was a species of troupial, a starling-like bird of social 

 habits, only larger than our starling, with glossy olive- 

 brown plumage and brilliant yellow breast. Pecho 

 amarillo (yellow breast) is its vernacular name. Now 

 as soon as we had settled comfortably on the grass the 

 entire flock, of thirty or forty birds, sprang up into the 

 air, going up out of the foliage like a fountain, then 

 suddenly they all together dropped down, and sweep- 

 ing by us over the water burst into a storm of loud 

 ringing jubilant cries and lifjuid notes. My companion 

 uttered a sudden strange harsh discordant laugh, and 

 turning away his sharp dry fox-like face, too late to 

 hide the sudden moisture 1 had seen in his eyes, he 

 exclaimed with savage emphasis on the first word — 

 "Curse the little birds — how^ glad they are !" 



That was his way of blessing them. He was a hard- 



