THE LAST APPEARANCE. 273 







and the mussy state of her once nicely kept 

 breast feathers told the tale, she had a nest 

 somewhere. Vainly, however, did I try to track 

 her home : she either took her way like an arrow 

 across the garden to a row of very tall locusts, 

 where a hundred humming-birds' nests might 

 have been hidden, or turned the other way over 

 a neighbor's field to a cluster of thickly grown 

 apple-trees, equally impossible to search. If she 

 had always gone one way I might have tried to 

 follow, but to look for her infinitesimal nest at 

 opposite poles of the earth was too discouraging, 

 even if the weather had been cool enough for 

 such exertion. 



When at last I could endure the wind and 

 the dust and the heat no longer, and stood one 

 morning on the porch, waiting for the most de- 

 liberate of drivers with his carriage to drive me 

 to the station, that I might leave Utah altogether, 

 the humming-bird appeared on the scene, took a 

 sip or two out of her red cups, flirted her feath- 

 ers saucily in my very face, then darted over 

 the top of the cottage and disappeared ; and that 

 was the very last glimpse I had of the little 

 dame in green. 



