262 NATURE'S STORY OF THE YEAR 



had extended to the head. The creature was 

 shrunken. The formerly neat tawny-and-white 

 fur was rough and matted, but the delicate feet 

 were as clean as when he was taken from the 

 hedge ; and as he lay dead in his lonely nest (so 

 carefully made) with the last flicker of a wretched 

 life gone out, with paws clenched, and the large 

 eyes tightly closed, as though by a fatal spasm, he 

 forcibly suggested the difference between the fate 

 that man had imposed on him, and that which he 

 would have otherwise enjoyed. True, in his cage 

 were nice foods such as the dwellers in the 

 wilderness know not ; yet the solitary prison, with 

 dry sawdust and monotonous wheel, was but a 

 miserable exchange for the peopled paths beneath 

 the odorous herbage of the hedge. 



A sight of that little creature recalled a far 

 different scene of animal life. On one of the last 

 evenings of May a nightingale was commencing 

 his song. He was at the side of a road through a 

 thicket, in which many other birds were singing. 

 One by one the voices ceased, for daylight was 

 fading, and the first hush of evening was approach- 

 ing. Suddenly a long-tailed fieldmouse emerged 



