THE STRUGGLE. 
{tt was a struggle. There is no denying 
that it was a struggle, and that things 
began to look bad. 
To begin with, the copses and the coverts 
were painting themselves red and _ russet, 
amber, brown, and pink; to go on with, 
the young cuckoos had gone long since, the 
nightingales had followed them, and the pee- 
wits and the starlings were gathered into 
flocks in the fields, as those who await 
the winter; whilst, finally, there was some- 
thing new and white and dangerous on the 
grass in the mornings, which you and I 
know was frost, but the pretty little black- 
and-white house-martins only knew was not 
mist. 
No wonder they worked, those little house- 
martins, to and from the mud-cup nest under 
the eaves of the old farm-house—the nest 
which in itself was a miracle, in that its 
builders had solved the problem of affixing a 
domed cup of mud, lined with feathers and 
straw, to a smooth wall. In another way, 
also, it was wonderful, inasmuch as its owners 
and builders had succeeded in rearing therein, 
and launching upon the world, no less than 
8.W. 
