96 FRESH FIELDS 



was afraid the woman, who saw me from the win- 

 dow, would think I had some designs npon her 

 premises. But I managed to look very indifferent 

 or abstracted when I passed. I am quite sure I 

 heard the chiding, guttural note of the bird I was 

 after. Doubtless her brood had come out that very 

 day. Another girl had heard a nightingale on her 

 way to school that morning, and directed me to the 

 road; still another pointed out to me the white- 

 throat and said that was my bird. This last was 

 a rude shock to my faith in the ornithology of 

 schoolgirls. Finally, I found a laborer breaking 

 stone by the roadside, — a serious, honest-faced 

 man, who said he had heard my bird that morning 

 on his way to work ; he heard her every morning, 

 and nearly every night, too. He heard her last 

 night after the shower (just at the hour when my 

 barber and I were trying to awaken her near Hazle- 

 mere), and she sang as finely as ever she did. 

 This was a great lift. I felt that I could trust this 

 man. He said that after his day's work was done, 

 that is, at five o'clock, if I chose to accompany him 

 on his way home, he would show me where he had 

 heard the bird. This I gladly agreed to; and, 

 remembering that I had had no dinner, I sought 

 out the inn in the village and asked for something 

 to eat. The unwonted request so startled the land- 

 lord that he came out from behind his inclosed bar 

 and confronted me with good-humored curiosity. 

 These back-country English inns, as I several times 

 found to my discomfiture, are only drinking places 



