OUR FEATHERED FRIENDS. 3 
of eighteen, and his total bag from these 
consisted of one tiny, pretty, round snail-shell, 
one numbed spider, and one fly as large as a 
flea. 
The tail of a cat, slipping soundlessly behind 
an ivy-clump, broke off further investigations 
here, and he removed, always hopping low and 
crouchingly, under cover, back to the summer- 
house on the lawn, where—to our amazement, 
not his—his odd-looking but wonderful eyes 
spotted a brownish-gray flake dancing merrily 
along with the white snowflakes. 
It vanished under an evergreen tree, and 
the bird, marking it, arrived a minute later 
to find that it was a little, dainty moth, quite 
at home, apparently, in the fiendish weather 
till the bird’s sharp beak switched off its life. 
Some time later it was that the snow ceased 
to fall, and the sun came out—a watery apology 
for a sun, truly, but still life and light. The 
thrush was just about to venture boldly out 
to glean yet more crumbs, when something 
moved on the summer-house wall, where it 
was sheltered by evergreens, and he stopped 
dead ’twixt hop and hop to look. 
It flew up, that thing, that tiny atom of 
gauzy life in the dread cold, till it reached 
the sunlight in a sheltered spot, and therein 
danced like a pinch of golden fluff. But it 
