Half an hour later I was still at the window. No sound from the nest. At a little distance the mother bird hopped about anxiously, something evidently on her mind. I watched her for a long time and she did not go up to the nest. “The old birds,” thought I, “are afraid of the mackintosh. It is better to drown than to starve,” and I picked my way out among the puddles with a chair in one hand and an umbrella in the other and managed to get the thing off. And there at the foot of the trellis sat a little helpless bunch of feathers with round bright eyes and a heart beating inside,--a baby robin tumbled out. I picked the adventurer up and took him into the house. He regarded me without distrust, comfortable in the warmth of my hand, but when I put him down he sent out no uncertain sound to say that he was unfriended. I have often tried to feed fledgelings, it is an impossible charge; and my advice as to this one was to put him on the window-ledge where his mother might do it. There he sat up with his back to the world and, looking at me with confidence, unexpectedly opened wide his preposterous futile yellow beak. It was as if a gnome had suddenly spoken--before the gaping demand I was helpless, full of consternation. “You pathetic little idiot,” I reflected aloud, “what can _I_ do for you!” and of course by the time bread and water arrived the beak was hermetically sealed, as usual. I sat down with confidence, however, to await events, and presently the small brown mother, saying all sorts of things in an undertone, came slipping in and out among the rose-stems below; and with much relief I saw the wanderer drop over the sill and join her. They made off together very quietly, and again I watched, uneasily, the nest. No sound, no parent birds, and as time went on still silence and abandonment. I decided that the young ones had been drowned or chilled to death before we thought of protecting them, that the friendly mackintosh had come too late; and in some depression I went out to see. By standing on a chair I could just reach, and thrusting my hand through the wet leaves I felt for the little corpses. The nest was empty!