Silverspot 



What did it all mean? I soon learned. They 

 Jewing love and pairing off. The - e 

 were showing off their wing powers and then 

 voices to the lady crows. And they must ^ 

 been highly appreciated, for by the middle of 

 Apdl ah hid mated and had scattered over the 

 country for their honeymoon, leaving the som- 

 bre old pines of Castle Frank deserted and 



silent. 



II 



The Sugar Loaf hill stands alone in the Don 

 Valley It is still covered with woods that join 

 with those of Castle Frank, a quarter of a mile 

 off In the woods, between the two hi Is, is a 

 pine-tree in whose top is a deserted hawk s nest. 

 Every Toronto school-boy knows the nest, and 

 excepting that I had once shot a black squirxe 



on its edge, no one had ever seen a sign of life 

 about it. There it was year after year, ragged 

 and old, and falling to pieces. Yet, strange to 

 tell, in all that time it never did drop to pieces, 

 like other old nests. 



One morning in May I was out at gray dawn, 

 and stealing gently through the woods, whose 



70 



