THE PROCESSION PASSES 93 
Then, motioning the children to keep still, she crossed the 
road to a point where, the sunlight falling behind her, she 
could look up at the wires without becoming dazzled, but 
as she did so the entire flock left the wires, and wheeling 
went down over the corn-field toward the reeds and low 
woods that bordered the mill-pond. 
“You were quite right, Tommy,” said Gray Lady, as 
they still stood looking at the wires in the hope that the 
birds might return; “‘there were not only three but four 
kinds of Swallows in that flock. The birds with the 
slightly forked tails, beautiful shining steel-blue and 
green cloaks, and satiny white underparts are Tree Swal- 
lows that do not nest near here, but stop with us on their 
spring and fall journeys, and the others that you did not 
notice, because in the distance they look somewhat like 
Barn Swallows, except that they lack the forked tail, 
are Cliff or Eaves Swallows, as they are called in this part, 
of the country, where they are rather uncommon. 
“Now we will go in and I will ask Tommy Todd, who 
writes very clearly, to put on the board the names of these 
four Swallows, and the particular thing about them that 
will help you to tell them apart. 
“No, I am afraid that they are not coming back,” said 
Gray Lady, after they had waited a couple of minutes 
more, ‘‘and they may all leave us suddenly any day now, 
though the Barn Swallow often stays into October and the 
White Breasted almost to November.” 
A wagon loaded with rye straw and drawn by a yoke of 
oxen came creaking up the hill and paused on the level 
place in front of the school. The teamster was Jared 
Hill’s grandfather, — the man who did not believe in play 
