Chickadee 
very bed, it may be, where he was hatched last sum- 
mer, and where at this moment, who knows, were half 
a dozen other chickadees, the rest of that last sum- 
mer’s brood, unscathed still, and still sharing the old 
home hollow, as snug and warm this bitter night as 
in the soft May days when they were nestlings here 
together. 
The cold drove me on; but the chickadee had 
warmed me and all my naked world of night and 
death. And so he ever does. The winter has yet to 
be that drives him seeking shelter to the south. I 
never knew it colder than in January and February 
of 1904. During both of those months, morning and 
evening, I drove through a long mile of empty, snow- 
buried woods. For days at a time I would not see even 
a crow, but morning and evening, at a certain dip in 
the road, two chickadees would fly from bush to bush 
across the hollow and cheer me on the way. They 
came out to the road, really, to pick up whatever 
scanty crumbs were to be found in my wake. They 
came also to hear me, to see me pass, — to escape for 
a moment, I think, the silence, desertion, and death 
of the woods. They helped me to escape, too. 
Four other chickadees, all winter long, ate with 
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