128 EIVEEBT 



friends along a secluded wood -road. Above the 

 hum of the conversation I caught the distressed cry 

 of a pair of blue jays. My companions heard it also, 

 but did not heed it. 



But to my ear the cry was peculiar. It was ut- 

 tered in a tone of anguish and alarm. I said, "Let 

 us see what is the trouble with these jays." I pres- 

 ently saw a nest twenty-five or thirty feet from the 

 ground in a small hemlock which I at once con- 

 cluded belonged to the jays. The birds were but a 

 few yards away, hopping about amid the neighbor- 

 ing branches, uttering now and then their despair- 

 ing note. Looking more intently at the nest, I be- 

 came aware in the dim light of the tree of something 

 looped about it, or else there was a dark, very crooked 

 limb that partly held it. Suspecting the true na- 

 ture of the case, I threw a stone up through the 

 branches, and then another and another, when the 

 dark loops and folds upon one side of the nest began 

 to disappear, and the head and neck of a black snake 

 to slowly slide out on a horizontal branch on the 

 other; in a moment the snake had cleared the nest, 

 and stretched himself along the branch. 



Another rock-fragment jarred his perch, when he 

 slid cautiously along toward the branch of a large 

 pine-tree which came out and mingled its spray with 

 that of the hemlock. It was soon apparent that the 

 snake was going to take refuge in the pine. As he 

 made the passage from one tree to the other, we 

 sought to dislodge him by a shower of sticks and 

 stones, but without success; he was soon upon a 



