124 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 
run faster in his shriveled old veins to have such 
gallant comrades. 
Purple grackles creaked and clattered in the trees, 
and the bushes were full of song-sparrow notes, as 
the Band hurried away from the house-line toward 
the Land of the Wild-Folk, where Romance still 
dwells and adventures lurk behind every bush. 
A tottering stone chimney marked its boundaries. 
There old Roberts Road began. On and beyond 
Roberts Road anything might happen. 
Each one of the Band, in addition to the lethal 
weapons already set forth, carried a note-book and 
a pencil with which to keep a list of all birds seen 
and heard, with notes on the same. Even Corporal 
Alice-Palace, who was only six, carried a blank- 
book about the size of a geography. To date it 
contained this single entry: “Robbins eat wormes. 
I saw him do it.” 
The Quartermaster-General, despite the difficulty 
of the evening before, had seen to it that the Band 
carried with them the very finest lunch that any 
treasure-hunters ever had since Pizarro dined with 
the Inca of Peru. 
As they moved deep and deeper into Wild-Folk 
Land the air was full of bird-songs. The Captain 
made them stop and listen to the singing sparrows. 
First there was the song sparrow, who begins with 
three notes and wheezes a little as he sings. It took 
them longer to learn the quieter song of the vesper 
sparrow, with the flash of white in his tail-feathers. 
His song always starts with two dreamy, contralto 
