90 THE TRAGEDIES OF THE NESTS. 



chances to lead you across it and your eye is quick 

 enough to note the silent brown bird as she darts 

 swiftly away ; but step three paces in the wrong di- 

 rection, and your search will probably be fruitless. 

 My friend and I found a nest by accident one day, 

 and then lost it again one minute afterward. I 

 moved away a few yards to be sure of the mother- 

 bird, charging my friend not to stir from his tracks. 

 When I returned, he had moved two paces, he said, 

 (he had really moved four), and we spent a half hour 

 stooping over the daisies and the buttercups, looking 

 for the lost clew. We grew desperate, and fairly felt 

 the ground over with our hands, but without avail. 

 I marked the spot with a bush, and came the next 

 day, and, with the bush as a centre, moved about it in 

 slowly increasing circles, covering, I thought, nearly 

 every inch of ground with my feet, and laying hold 

 of it with all the visual power I could command, till 

 my patience was exhausted, and I gave up, baffled. 

 I began to doubt the ability of the parent birds them- 

 selves to find it, and so secreted myself and watched. 

 After much delay, the male bird appeared with food 

 in his beak, and satisfying himself that the coast was 

 clear, dropped into the grass which I had trodden 

 down in my search. Fastening my eye upon a par- 

 ticular meadow-lily, I walked straight to the spot, bent 

 down, and gazed long and intently into the grass. 

 Finally my eye separated the nest and its young 

 from its surroundings. My foot had barely missed 

 them in my search, but by how much they had escaped 



