CHRISTMAS IN THE WOODS 55 



bunch of green, high up in one of the gums, and 

 made his first discovery ! 



So this Christmas Day the boy climbed up again 

 at the peril of his precious neck, and brought down 

 a bit of that old romance. 



I followed the stream along through the swamp 

 to the open meadows, and then on under the steep 

 wooded hillside that ran up to the higher land of 

 corn and melon fields. Here at the foot of the slope 

 the winter sun lay warm, and here in the sheltered, 

 briery border I came upon the Christmas birds. 



There was a great variety of them, feeding and 

 preening and chirping in the vines. The tangle was 

 a-twitter with their quiet, cheery talk. Such a medley 

 of notes you could not hear at any other season out- 

 side a city bird store. How far the different species 

 understood one another I should like to know, and 

 whether the hum of voices meant sociability to them, 

 as it certainly did to me. Doubtless the first cause of 

 their flocking here was the sheltered warmth and 

 the great numbers of berry-laden bushes, for there 

 was no lack of abundance or of variety on this 

 Christmas table. 



In sight from where I stood hung bunches of 

 withering chicken, or frost, grapes, plump clusters 

 of blue-black berries of the greenbrier, and limbs of 

 the smooth winterberry beaded with their flaming 

 fruit. There were bushes of crimson ilex, too, trees 



