22 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



and then again many and many times on many following 

 days, for he was now much too strong on the wing to be 

 hunted down; but though he invariably greeted and 

 appeared to welcome me with his loud chirp, he refused 

 to come down, and 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 dis- 

 tance, 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 



