48 THE CLERK OF THE WOODS 



answers, perhaps ; for I, too, am a Yankee. 

 He was the man who told me about the 

 throngs of sightseers that came here. The 

 very publicity of the thing had been the 

 birds' salvation, he was inclined to believe. 

 The entire community had taken them under 

 its protection, and with so many windows 

 overlooking the place, and the police on the 

 alert (I had noticed a placard near by, signed 

 by the chief, laying down the law and calling 

 upon all good citizens to help him enforce it), 

 it would have been hard for anybody to med- 

 dle with the nest without coming to grief. 

 At all events, the birds had so far escaped 

 molestation, and the young, as I have said, 

 would soon be on the wing. One of them 

 was thrusting its full-grown, wide-awake, 

 eager-looking, mouse-colored head out of the 

 aperture as we talked. 



" But why so much excitement over a fam- 

 ily of woodpeckers ? " some reader may be 

 asking. Rarity, my friend ; rarity and bril- 

 liant feathers. So far as appears from the 

 latest catalogue of Massachusetts birds, this 

 Newton nest is one of a very small number 

 ever found in the State, and the very first 



