Flow T became an Idler. 25 
mented and vaguely written all over with mystic 
characters in some dusky tint on an indeterminate 
greyish-tawny ground. 
At length, about half-past three to four o’clock, 
a most welcome sound was heard—the familiar 
twittering of a pair of scissor-tail tyrant birds from 
a neighbouring willow-tree ; and after an interval, 
the dreamy, softly rising and falling, throaty 
warblings of the white-rumped swallow. A loved 
and beautiful bird is this, that utters his early song 
circling round and round in the dusky air, when the 
stars begin to pale; and his song, perhaps, seems 
sweeter than all others, because it corresponds in 
time to that rise in the temperature and swifter flow 
of the blood—the inward resurrection experienced 
on each morning of our individual life. Next in 
order the red-billed finches begin to sing—a curious, 
gobbling, impetuous performance, more like a cry 
than a song. These are pretty reed birds, olive- 
green, buff-breasted, with long tails and bright red 
beaks. The intervals between their spasmodic 
bursts of sound were filled up with the fine frail 
melody of the small brown and grey crested song- 
sparrows. Last of all was heard the long, leisurely- 
uttered chanting cry of the brown carrion-hawk, as 
he flew past, and I knew that the morning was 
beautiful in the east. Little by little the light began 
to appear through the crevices, faint at first, like 
faintly-traced pallid lines on a black ground, then 
brighter and broader until I, too, had a dim twilight 
in the cabin. 
