True to the word, my glass was hardly in play before a bay-breast showed himself, in magnificent plumage; then came a Blackburnian, also in high feather, handsomer even than the bay-breast, but less of a rarity; and then, all in a flash, I caught a glimpse of some bright-colored, black-and-yellow bird that, almost certainly, from an indefinable something half seen about the head, could not be a magnolia. “That should be a Cape May!” I said aloud to myself. Even as I spoke, however, he was out of sight. Down the road I went, trying to keep abreast of the flock, which moved much too rapidly for my comfort. Again I saw what might have been the Cape May, but again there was nothing like certainty. And again I lost him. With the trees so thick, and the birds so small and so active, it was impossible to do better. I had missed my chance, I thought; but just then something stirred among the leaves of a fir tree close by me, on the very edge of the swamp, and the next moment a bird stepped upon the outermost twig, as near me as he could get, and stood there fully displayed: a splendid Cape May, in superb color, my first New England specimen. “Look at me,” he said; “this is for your benefit.” And I looked with both eyes. Who would not be an ornithologist, with sights like this to reward him? The procession moved on, by the air line, impossible for me to follow. The Cape May, of course, had departed with the rest. So I assumed,--without warrant, as will presently appear. But I had no quarrel with Fate. For a plodding, wingless creature, long accustomed to his disabilities, I was being handsomely used. The soul is always seeking new things, says a celebrated French philosopher, and is always pleased when it is shown more than it had hoped for. This is preëminently true of rare warblers. Now I would cross the bridge, walk once more under the arch of willows,--happy that I _could_ walk, being a man only,--and back to the village again by the upper road. For a half mile on that road the prospect is such that no mortal need desire a better one.