More Chatter 
of young ones across the road, and was standing 
to show fight to the intruding men. John 
Smith spoke with admiration, not at all as if he 
regarded weasels as enemies. 
He told me that, for some years before he gave 
up, hares had disappeared from his farm, because, 
he thought, coursing had been abandoned. No 
longer hunted, the hares had resumed their habit 
of following definite “runs,” and had been too 
easy a prey for poachers. So Mr. Smith argued. 
One summer afternoon, being then a very old 
man, he sat in my garden watching, with excited 
exclamations of delight, the coming and going of 
a “‘bee-bird”’ as he called it—a_ fly-catcher. 
“There he goes,” he said, time after time, as 
the little bird swooped from its chosen stand 
on a low branch. Nothing then would satisfy 
Mr. Smith until he had determined where the 
nest must be; and after that his account of the 
large broods hatched by fly-catchers showed that 
he must have been an active birds’-nester in his 
boyhood. Another thing that interested him 
that afternoon was the visit of a small flock of 
tits, that hovered and fluttered over a water-pan 
set under an old apple tree. ‘‘ What a lot of 
’em!” I murmured. “All one brood, no 
doubt,”’ my uncle said. 
It felt good to be there. With the apple 
trees, and the birds, and the May-time, the old 
farmer’s mind seemed much in tune. 
ES 7 
