DRAGON'S BLOOD 221 



thicket, he tactfully and smackingly cried, "Kiss, 

 kiss, kiss," and dived into the bushes to join her. 

 Again and again he ran through his little repertoire, 

 so low that thirty feet away he could hardly be heard. 

 Leaden clouds and dank mists might cover the earth, 

 but life would always be worth the living so long as 

 one could find snatches of jeweled songs like that 

 sung to me by the cardinal. As I started homeward 

 under the dripping sky, crimson against the dark 

 green of a cedar tree, my friend called his good-bye 

 to me in one last long ringing note. 



Late that afternoon the rain stopped, the clouds 

 rolled back, and in the west the sky was a mass of 

 flame, with pools of sapphire-blue and rose-red cloud. 

 Above, in a stretch of pure cool apple-green, floated 

 the newest of new moons. As the after-glow ebbed, 

 one by one all the wondrous tints merged into a great 

 band of amber that barred the dark for long. Just 

 before it faded in the last moments of the twilight, 

 there shuddered across the evening air the sweetest, 

 saddest note that can be heard in all winter music. 

 It was a tremolo, wailing little cry that always makes 

 me think of the children the pyxies stole, who can 

 be heard now and again in the twilight, or before 

 dawn, calling, calling vainly for one long gone. In 

 the dim light in a nearby tree, I could see the ear- 

 tufts of the little red-brown screech-owl. Like the 

 beat of unseen wings, his voice trembled again and 

 again through the air, and answering him, I called 

 him up to within six feet of me. Around and around 

 my head he flew like a great moth, his soft muffled 



