TRAGEDY IN THE NEST. 
‘ ( Pekoo ! Cuck-cuckoo! Cuck-oo! 
Cuck-oo !’ 
For hundreds of miles it rang, that cry, 
all along the white south shore of Old 
England, from Devon to Dover—‘ Cuck-oo !’ 
—as those strange, big, mysterious birds, 
which we hear so much of for a short time, 
and then nothing at all, poured into the country 
from the south. 
Yesterday there had been no cuckoos in 
that particular district. To-day it was as if 
there had never been anything else. 
One came flying swiftly, with shallow strokes 
of the narrow wings, something pigeon-, some- 
thing hawk-like—an odd bird, gray above, 
white-and-black-banded below. The long tail 
fanned out like unto the tail of a blackbird, 
and, after the manner of a blackbird, too— 
about which I have told you elsewhere—she 
looped under the overhanging bough of a tree, 
and perched in its heart. 
She was not alone. Several admirers ac- 
companied her, yet that wonderful stealth of 
the cuckoos never deserted them. They were 
quite hard to detect. 
