CARDINAL: MY FIRST CAGED RIRD 23 



trees arc bare, tlic rainy soulli wind blows, and there 

 are frosty nights, frosts that would sometimes last all 

 day or even several days. Then it was that I missed 

 my bird and wondered often what had become of him. 

 Had he too flown north to a warmer country with the 

 swallows and other niij^rants? It could not be believed. 

 But he was no longer in the plantation — that little 

 sheltering island of trees in the level grassy sea-like 

 plain; and I should never see him more or know what 

 his fate had been. 



One day, in August, the men employed about the 

 place were engaged in a grand annual campaign against 

 the rats — a sort of spring-cleaning in and out of doors. 

 The shelter of the huge old foss, and of the trees and 

 thickets, wood-piles, many outbuildings and barns full 

 of raw or untanned hides, attracted numbers of these 

 unpleasant little beasts and made it a sort of rats' 

 metropolis; and it was usual to clear them out in early 

 spring before the new grass and herbage sprang up and 

 covered the ground. They were suffocated with smoke, 

 made deadly with brimstone and tobacco, pumped into 

 their holes. I was standing by one of the men who 

 was opening one of the runs after the smoking process, 

 when I caught sight of a gleam of scarlet colour in a 

 heap of straw and rubbish he was turning over with his 

 spade, and, jumping down, I picked up the shining red 

 object. It was my lost cardinal's crest! And there too 

 were his grey wing and tail feathers, white feathers 

 from his breast, and even some of his bones. Alas! he 

 had found it too cold to roost in the naked trees in the 



