4 Spring 



when he is ' hot ' or ' cold.' ' Tweet, tweet/ says the 

 bold and handsome chaffinch in a low staccato while 

 yet the enemy is afar. There must be a nest there, 

 you think, and the surmise deepens into certainty 

 as with eager eye but sauntering gait you come that 

 way, and the bird's alarm shrills into a sharp ' Twink, 

 twink,' loudening as you near, softening when you 

 take up a wrong scent. At last you discern a bulge 

 in the grey moss on the ash-tree ; closely considered 

 it is a cunningly devised and beautiful contrivance, so 

 like the bark to which it is fastened that if your eye 

 turns from it the search has to be made over again. 

 The mother crouches as you look, and the cock darts 

 round and round in a storm of twinking shrieks. It 

 is probably the cuckoo of most refined and cultivated 

 tastes, the precieux of the tribe, that selects this 

 charming household for his labours. 



After all, however, this was only a kind of birds- 

 nesting for girls : very pretty and interesting, no 

 doubt, but not soul-satisfying, at any rate not to the 

 mature schoolboy of ten or twelve, who made him- 

 self acquainted with the facts, indeed, but only by 

 way of pleasing a cousin in petticoats or initiating a 

 younger brother. He preferred something with a 

 little more excitement. Away over the field are the 

 towers of a ruined, ivy-grown castle, ' bosomed high 

 in tufted trees.' It is on the other side of the river, 

 and that is nine points in its favour. An aged ferry- 

 man would pilot one over for a copper ; but no, that 



