A Pasture Tragedy 



By M. H. PRENTICE 



ALL the world was glad on the day that I found the Kingfisher's nest. 

 ^ The soft golden warmth of a fair summer's day lay over village and 

 field and lured me forth. 



The previous day, the Wise Man, who knows the ways of beasts and 

 birds, h^d allowed me to go with him on a field excursion in the capacity of 

 Ignoramus. We had taken six fully feathered young Flickers, or High 

 Holes — a misnomer in this case, for the hole was only six feet from the 

 ground — and photographed them; we had released a full-fledged young 

 Barn Swallow that was bound to his mud home by an entangling horse- 

 hair, and had seen him fly forth " light as a swallow," and altogether I had 

 begun to feel that a new world was opened to me. 



And now the Wise Man was away and the beautiful day called me out 

 to explore. It has always been the way of explorers and discoverers to follow 

 the course of a stream; what was I, that I should disregard their example^ 

 So down through the wonderful five-acre daisy field — abomination of all 

 the thrifty farmers thereabout — I went. " And still my heart with pleas- 

 ure fills," as its flowers " flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of 

 solitude." Then up the hill and down the bank into the pasture through 

 which curled a cheerful little stream, narrow enough in places so that I 

 could step across it. A week later it was a raging flood a hundred 

 yards wide. 



No sign of tragedy for beast or bird was there that day. The Thistle- 

 bird winging his yellow zigzag across the field was gladness animate. A 

 Red -winged Blackbird on a hickory tree looked like a note of joy, the "sol" 

 of the musical scale to the people who "see" color in tone. 



As I approached, walking through the reeds and grasses of the lowland, 

 this Red-wing became agitated from tip to tail as to his exterior, and, 

 judging from his distressed cries and calls, evidently his mental state 

 corresponded. This interested me but little, for in trustful childhood more 

 than once I had been led by the oriflamme of his wings into bogs that sank 

 beneath me, but never had I been able to find the light-woven nest of 

 wiry twigs which he delights to build, a little above the ground, in some 

 water-loving bush which grows in the midst of marshy ground. 



But this time as I, without the slightest purpose of interfering in his 

 family affairs, advanced, he redoubled his demonstrations and was joined in 

 them by a brown -streaked bird, very plain in appearance, his mate, as I 

 afterward discovered. At last they both darted at me with wild cries. 

 Then my dull intelligence took the hint. I was certainly near some treasure 

 of theirs. It could not be their nest, for there was no place near at hand 

 where it could be built. What then? 



(•97) 



