82 IN SEARCH OF THE BLUE JAY. 



know my business in his private quarters. I 

 rose to leave him in possession. In rising I dis- 

 turbed another resident, a red squirrel, who ran 

 out on a branch and delivered as vehement a 

 piece of mind as I ever heard, stamping his little 

 feet and jerking his bushy tail with every word 5 

 scolding all over, to the tip of his longest hair. 



I left them in their green paradise. I went 

 to my room. I sat down in my rocker to con- 

 sider. 



Then the winds got up. Through the "bel- 

 lows pipe," as they suggestively call the head of 

 the valley, there poured such a gale that the 

 birds could hardly hold on to their perches. All 

 day long it tossed the branches, tore off leaves, 

 beat the birds, rattled the windows, and filled 

 the blue cover to our green bowl of a valley with 

 clouds, even half way down the sides of the 

 mountains themselves. And at last they began 

 to weep, and I spent my twilight by an open 

 window, wrapped in a shawl, listening to the 



" Unrivaled one, the hermit-thrush, 

 Solitary, singing in the west," 



and looking out upon the hills, where I still 

 hoped to find my blue jay. 



