All this time the cat-bird kept up its mewing and screaming at the door, outside, nor did it cease until the birds were placed back in the nest. The custom of the cat-birds everywhere to play the detective, and sound the note of warning in behalf of all the other birds, is well known. Is there danger anywhere, they rush to the rescue with imploring cry, setting up a great agony of sound and posture, very ludicrous if not pathetic. And the poor cat-bird is always at swords' points with the farmer. Scarecrows a plenty deck the orchards and ornament the gardens. More do these historical and sometimes artistic beings serve to ease the farmer's conscience than to intimidate the birds; for it is well known that cat-birds thrive best under the grotesque shadows of the scarecrow. And the more horrible of face and figure are these individuals created, the more are they sought after by the very birds they are intended to scare out of their wits. It will probably take another generation of fruit-men to wake up to the fact that these and other birds habitually mistake the scarecrow for a guide-board to "ways and means," or a sign for "home cooking." Would the farmer stop when he has finished the very worst scarecrow he can conjure up out of last year's trousers and coat and hat and straw from the bedding mow, the birds would have fair play. But the shot-gun, alas! picks off the poor little mew bird almost as fast as he himself picked off the berries an hour before, and so the farmer is accused of having "no heart." But the farmer's boy of the bare feet and brown legs loves the funny bird. He will sit for an hour near its brier-bound nest, chuckling at its screams and gestures, and wondering "why it isn't a cat for good and all." Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? --O, be my friend and teach me to be thine. Emerson. CHAPTER IV THE HERMIT-THRUSH Thrush, thrush, have mercy on thy little bill; I play to please myself, albeit ill; And yet--though how it comes to pass I cannot tell-- My singing pleases all the world as well. Montgomery. Hermit that it is, this little thrush is known and loved in nearly all of North America. True, there are several of its relatives about in fields and woods, which are taken for the hermit by those who have not compared the different birds; the plain, deep olive-brown above, with dotted creamy vest, being a popular dress with the thrushes. The hermit answers to several names, suiting the location in which it is found. In low parts of the South it is known as the swamp-robin. You meet it in the damp, shady places where it is always twilight, in the fascinating grounds of the snails and water-beetles.