My seat under the snowball-tree (to the coolness of which I had moved from under the cedar) had presently to be given up. The women of the house became aware of me, and out of a bashful regard for my own comfort I took the road again. Soon I passed a double house, with painted doors and two-sash windows! And in one of the windows were lace curtains! It was wonderful,--I was obliged to confess it, in spite of a deep-seated masculine prejudice against all such contrivances,--it was wonderful what an air of elegance they conferred, though the paint of the doors was to be considered, of course, in the same connection. By this time the road was approaching the slope of Buck Hill, and high noon as it was, I must run up for another half-hour among the old trees at the top,--with no special result except to disturb a summer tanager, who fired off volley after volley of objurgatory expletives, and altogether seemed to be in a terrible state of mind. His excitement was all for nothing; unless--what was likely enough--it served to give him favor in the eyes of his mate, who may be presumed to have been somewhere within hearing. Lovers, I believe, are supposed to welcome an opportunity to play the hero. My last afternoon at the Bridge was devoted to a longish tramp into a new piece of country, where for an hour I had hopes of adding at least a name or two to my Virginia bird list, which for twenty-four hours had been at a standstill. I came unexpectedly upon a mill, and what was of greater account, a millpond,--“a long, dirty pond,” as my uncivil pencil describes it. Here were swallows, as might have been foreseen, but the most careful scrutiny revealed nothing beyond the two species already catalogued,--the barn swallow and the rough-wing. Here, too, in an apple orchard, were a Baltimore oriole gathering straws, a phœbe, a golden warbler, and several warbling vireos, the only ones so far noticed with the exception of a single bird at Pulaski. About the border of the pond were spotted sandpipers (no solitaries, to my disappointment) and two male song sparrows. This last species I saw but twice in Virginia,--along the bushy shore of the creek at Pulaski, and here beside this millpond. Wherever the song sparrow is scarce, it is likely to be restricted to the immediate neighborhood of water. Even in Massachusetts it is pretty evident that such places are its first choice. As I sometimes say, the song sparrow likes a swamp as well as the swamp sparrow; but the species being so exceedingly abundant, there are not swampy spots enough to go round, and the majority of the birds have to shift as they can, along bushy fence-rows and in pastures and scrub-lands.