BIEDS IN A VILLAGE. 
11 
the bare wet ground directly under the nightingale, 
began busily pecking at something eatable it had 
discovered. No sooner had he began pecking 
than out leaped the concealed cat on to him. The 
sparrow fluttered wildly up from beneath or 
between the claws and escaped as if by a miracle. 
The cat raised itself up, glared round, and, catching 
sight of me close by, sprang back into the hedge 
and was gone. But all this time the exposed 
nightingale, perched only five feet above the spot 
where the attack had been made and the sparrow 
had so nearly lost its life, had continued sing- 
ing; and he sang on for some minutes after. I 
suppose that he had seen the cat before, and knew 
instinctively that he was beyond its reach, that 
it was a terrestrial not an aerial enemy, and so 
feared it not at all ; and he would perhaps have 
continued singing if the sparrow had been caught 
and instantly killed. 
Quite early in June I began to feel just a little 
cross with the nightingales, for they ceased sing- 
ing; and considering that the spring had been a 
backward one, it seemed to me that their silence 
had come too soon. I was not sufficiently regard- 
ful of the fact that their lays are solitary, as the 
poet has said, that they ask for no witness of 
their song, nor thirst for human praise. They 
were all nesting now. But if I heard them less, 
