Pipi soon regained his strength, his song, and his spirits; he found a wife, and when his young ones were old enough to understand, he told them many stories of his wonderful adventures. And he did not forget to go and see Peter and his wife in the autumn, when the birds were on their way once more to the south. He came into the garden, and from the stunted currant-tree on the wall he looked into the kitchen, and uttered a little low note of greeting. The woman looked up from her washing, saw Pipi, and uttered a cry of delight. “Peter!” she called, “it is the sick bird! Come quick and see!” But Pipi could not stay for Peter, and the cage, still standing on the dresser, made him even now feel a little uncomfortable. His voice, like that of all his comrades, had been almost silent for several weeks; but as a gleam of autumn sunshine shot into the garden, and lit up the hardy little double daisies that still contrived to bloom in that bleak spot, he called up all his strength, and uttered a single strain, the faint echo of his old spring song, before he flew away. It went straight to the good woman’s heart, and she never forgot it. “Peter,” she said, as the lighthouse-man came into the kitchen, “don’t forget to tell the Professor gentleman that the little bird came back to thank him and us. And, Peter, don’t you ever go for to keep any more birds in cages, when you can have ’em sing to you out o’ doors; for the blessed creatures are worth better than that, and there’s human beings as might take a lesson from ’em.” And those kind eyes of hers were moist as she went on with her washing. THE OWLS’ REVENGE. (A TALE OF BIRDS AND MEN.) I. In May all woods are beautiful; but of all the woods I know, there is none on which the month of bluebells so freely lavishes her delights, as on the ancient and unkempt wood of Truerne. The blue carpet spread in every clearing, the gray-green oak-stems rising softly out of the blue, the fleecy clouds of spring, seen gently moving eastwards through the ruddy young leaves overhead, can never be forgotten by any one who has rambled here for a whole May-morning. No trim park-paling shuts in Truerne wood; its outskirts are set about, in these sweet spring days, with an untidy maze of “whitening hedges and uncrumpling fern,” with stretches of gorse and trailing bramble, with dense thickets of blackthorn where the nightingale builds his nest and sings unheeded. It is all this wild setting of the woodland, as well as the freedom of the wood itself, that makes it so dear to such of its human neighbours as love quiet and solitude, as well as to the birds and beasts that find home and happiness in its shelter.