2 OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS. 
You could tell him from our ordinary thrush 
because he was more blotchy in colour, and 
had a lean, snaky look; and he cleared the 
bread-crumbs every morning as quietly as a 
ghost before every one had finished quarrelling. 
Nobody knew that he had come one recent 
night over leagues of fields, over more leagues 
of desolate water the night before that, and 
over yet further leagues of snow - covered 
wastes the night before that, from the lands 
where the bear and the elk roam, and reindeer 
have their homes. Nobody cared where he 
had come from, either, or what he had suffered 
by the way. 
They all regarded him as an interloper, and 
they were all short of food as it was. The 
blackbird chased him into the shrubbery ; and 
there he stood, his keen eye—something frog- 
like, too—watching the blue tits hanging 
upside-down on the lump of suet suspended 
on a piece of string specially for their benefit. 
Then he picked up a dead leaf, and flinging 
it over his shoulder in a care-for-nothing style, 
peered underneath with a keen and searching 
eye. A crumb rewarded him. Followed two 
low, long hops, four seconds of motionless 
watchfulness, and another leaf flew over his 
shoulder. 
Another followed, and others to the number 
