DRAGON’S BLOOD 221 
thicket, he tactfully and smackingly cried, “Kiss, 
kiss, kiss,’’ and dived into the bushes to join her. 
Again and again he ran through his little repertoire, 
so low that thirty feet away he could hardly be heard. 
Leaden clouds and dank mists might cover the earth, 
but life would always be worth the living so long as 
one could find snatches of jeweled songs like that 
sung to me by the cardinal. As I started homeward 
under the dripping sky, crimson against the dark 
green of a cedar tree, my friend called his good-bye 
to me in one last long ringing note. 
Late that afternoon the rain stopped, the clouds 
rolled back, and in the west the sky was a mass of 
flame, with pools of sapphire-blue and rose-red cloud. 
Above, in a stretch of pure cool apple-green, floated 
the newest of new moons. As the after-glow ebbed, 
one by one all the wondrous tints merged into a great 
band of amber that barred the dark for long. Just 
before it faded in the last moments of the twilight, 
there shuddered across the evening air the sweetest, 
saddest note that can be heard in all winter music. 
It was a tremolo, wailing little ery that always makes 
me think of the children the pyxies stole, who can 
be heard now and again in the twilight, or before 
dawn, calling, calling vainly for one long gone. In 
the dim light in a nearby tree, I could see the ear- 
tufts of the little red-brown screech-owl. Like the 
beat of unseen wings, his voice trembled again and 
again through the air, and answering him, I called 
him up to within six feet of me. Around and around 
my head he flew like a great moth, his soft muffled 
