THE TREASURE-HUNT 127 
dove whose nest he once found on the last day of 
March. It was only a flat platform of dry sticks in 
a spruce tree, and held two pearly-white eggs. The 
day after he found it, there came a sudden snow- 
storm, and when he saw the nest again, it was 
covered with snow — but there was the mother-bird 
still brooding her dear-loved eggs, with her head just 
showing above the drifted whiteness. 
Beside the ruins of a spring-house, a gray bird with 
a tilting tail said, “‘Phoe, bee-bee, bee.”’ It was the 
little phoebe, so glad to be back that he stuttered 
when he called his name. Thereafter the Captain 
was moved to relate another anecdote. It seemed 
a friend of his had stopped a pair of robins from 
nesting over a hammock hung under an apple tree, 
by nailing a stuffed cat right beside their bough. 
Whereupon the two robins, when they came the next 
morning, fled with loud chirps of dismay. When two 
pheebes started to build on his porch, he tried the 
same plan. He was called out of town the next day, 
and when he came back a week later he found that 
the phcebes had deserted their old nest. They had 
however built a new one — on top of the cat’s head. 
As the Band swung back into the far end of Roberts 
Road, the Captain’s eye caught the gleam of a half- 
healed notch which he had cut in a pin-oak sapling 
the year before, at the top of a high bank, to mark 
the winter-quarters of a colony of blacksnakes. 
He halted the Band, and one by one they clambered 
up the slope, stopping puffingly at the first ledge, 
and searching the withered grass and gray rocks 
