228 BESIDE THE GREAT SALT LAKE. 



ing motionless, in the hope that they would 

 not notice me. Vain hope ! nothing could es- 

 cape those sharp eyes when once the bird was 

 aroused. After they had said what they chose 

 to my friend, who received the taunts and abuse 

 of the infuriated mob in meek silence, lifting 

 not her voice to reply, they turned the stream of 

 their eloquence upon me. 



I was equally passive, for indeed I felt that 

 they had a grievance. We have no right to 

 expect birds to tell one human being from 

 another, so long as we, with all our boasted in- 

 telligence, cannot tell one crow or one magpie 

 from another ; and all the week they had suffered 

 persecution at the hands of the village boys. 

 Young magpies, nestlings, were in nearly every 

 house, and the birds had endured pillage, and 

 doubtless some of them death. I did not blame 

 the grieved parents for the reception they gave 

 us ; from their point of view we belonged to 

 the enemy. 



After the storm had swept by, and while we 

 sat there waiting to see if the birds would re- 

 turn, one of the horses of the pasture made his 

 appearance on the side where I sat, now eating 

 the top of a rosebush, now snipping off a flower 

 plant that had succeeded in getting two leaves 

 above the ground, but at every step coming 

 nearer me. It was plain that he contemplated 



