THE HANGING BIRD 285 



bird's nest. "Yes," she said, "if you will get bunches of 

 horsehairs and pieces of string and put them about on 

 fence posts and in the limbs of trees, most likely this bird 

 will find them and decide to build its nest where material 

 is plenty." At once I asked where to get the horsehairs 

 and was given permission to take a pair of scissors and go 

 to the barn and cut a small bunch here and there out of 

 old Phoebe's and Flora's tails. Phoebe and Flora were 

 the old sorrel horses that were the main stand-bys on the 

 farm. Mother made me promise that I would not get 

 hair from the other horses' tails and that I would not get 

 so much as to spoil the looks of their tails; and away I 

 went, happy as could be, to get my horsehairs. As luck 

 would have it, father was in the barn; and when I told 

 him what I wanted he not only let me clip from Phoebe's 

 and Flora's tails but got me a fine bunch of long white 

 hair from Tuck's tail, and some long black hair from 

 Napoleon's. 



Armed with this supply, I put horsehairs in the cracks 

 and under the splinters of every post and fence stake 

 within three or four rods of the great red maple tree that 

 grew near the milk house pump. Later mother gave me 

 some short pieces of cotton warp that were left when she 

 had finished threading the loom for a new carpet, and these 

 were scattered about in the same way. 



Nothing happened for a day or two, and by that time I 

 was busy making stick nests in the box elder trees below 

 the barn in the hope that a robin would decide on one of 

 them as a convenient home for him, and my horsehairs 

 and strings were forgotten. I suppose I must have built 

 a dozen such nests, or what I called nests, and came home 

 at dinner time full of plans to tell mother about the won- 



