Day after day he spent most of his time shouting out to all the world at the 

 top of his voice that he had a house and wanted a housekeeper. From time to 

 time he carried in a twig or two, scratched around inside, and threw out any 

 building material which did not meet his needs. Once we saw him push out a 

 twig nine inches long which must have reached from floor to the ceiling on the 

 opposite side. 



After three weeks of singing no mate had come, but he still went occasionally 

 into his battered castle to see that all was right. 



One day from a cherry tree there came squeals like those of a young bird 

 when caught or injured. Hastening to the rescue, we discovered a cat under the 

 tree looking eagerly up, — the same cat against which we have laid a tentative 

 indictment for the murder of our two mother Wrens and the brood of one of 

 them. The squeals continued after the cat was driven away, and we thought 

 they certainly came from a fledgeling that had escaped from the cat's claws. We 

 peered among the branches w^ondering if we could get the injured bird and care 

 for it along with a supposed Cowbird we were rearing. But no ; the cries came 

 from our own widowed Wren, and he continued to make them several times after 

 fie had flown to another tree. But a \\'ren is such an indomitable optimist that 

 he presently recovered his spirits, and hopping to a higher limb, sent forth his 

 cheerful twitter. 



But this was a new kind of cry for a Wren. Never before heard by us in 

 all the years of our intimate acquaintance with Troglodytes ccdon. This gives him 

 a fourth number to his repertoire ; his baby cry for food, his song, his scold, and 

 this cry of dire distress. A Wren's courage is truly comical, it is so out of all 

 proportion to his size ; but this was not a defiance ; it was a wail. Why did he 

 not fly away from the tree and the cat instead' of remaining and shrieking in 

 terror? Had the cat charmed him? Or did he recognize the despoiler of his 

 former happy home ? About that time it seemed to occur to him that neither his 

 house nor the peach tree afforded a sufficiently elevated rostrum from which to 

 proclaim his desires, and he took to singing from a dead twig in the very top of a 

 tall pear tree, clinging there with one foot above the other and standing straight 

 up, head in the air, while he informs the wide world that "Barkis is willin'." 



Beside his singing, he has one other pressing duty to perform. He must 

 defend his castle. On two different days a strange Wren, larger, ruddier, and 

 with longer bill — probably Benvick's AWen — came to inspect the castle, and was 

 promptly invited to go about his business and not be trying to jump the claim of 

 another. And by the first of August his inveterate foes, the English Sparrows, 

 had finished gleaning the grain fields and had returned to the habitations of men. 

 And they pester him ; pester him beyond endurance. They peer into his house, 

 walk around it, pull out his building material, and pry into his affairs with unbear- 

 able impertinence. What if these ill-natured gossips should find out that he has 

 no wife in the little house? 



It is really funny to see how intense is his sense of dominion, when all he 



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