For a long time I had my lonely road to myself, almost the sole passer-by being a boy who drove the village cows back and forth, and whom I had taken pains to interest in the safety of the little family. But such a state of things could not last. One morning, as I sat in my usual place, I noticed a party of girls starting out with baskets and pails after berries. They scattered over the meadow, and while I trembled for meadow lark and bobolink babies, I hoped they would not see me; but one of them came directly to the thorn-tree. As she approached, I turned away, as if I had no particular interest in the tree, but, unfortunately, just as she was passing, the bird flew off the nest. The girl looked up, and instantly shouted to me, "Oh, here's a bird's-nest!" "Yes," I replied, knowing that my best policy was to claim it, "that's the nest I am watching." After a sharp look at the tree she went on; but I was much disturbed, for I regard a nest discovered almost the same as a nest robbed. Would she tell? Should I some day find the nest broken up or destroyed? Every morning, after that, I took my long, lonely walk with misgivings, and did not feel easy till I had seen the birds. [Sidenote: _SEARCHING THE THORNS._] One very notorious habit of the shrike I had been especially desirous of investigating--that of impaling his prey. Judging from what has been written about him, it must be a common performance, his daily business, and I confidently expected to see his thorn-tree adorned, from roots to topmost twig, with grasshoppers and beetles, not to mention small birds and animals. Early in my visits to him, I looked the tree over carefully, and, not content with my own eyes, called in the aid of a friend. Moreover, we together made diligent search in the only other thorn-tree in the vicinity, one spoken of above. Not a sign could we discover in either tree of any such use of a thorn, though thorns were there in abundance. Again, one day I saw the bird very busy about the barbed-wire fence, and remembering to have seen the statement that shrikes in the West, where thorn-trees are absent, impale their grasshoppers on the barbs, I thought, "Now I have surely caught you at it!" I did not disturb him, and he worked at that spot some time. But when he had gone I hastened over to see what beetle or bird he had laid up, when behold, the barbs were as empty as the thorns. In fact, I was never able to find the smallest evidence that the bird ever does impale anything, and the St. Albans ornithologist spoken of adds as his testimony that he has often examined the haunts of this bird, but has never found anything impaled. And a correspondent in Vermont writes me that he watched the shrike for twenty years, on purpose to see this performance, and in all that time saw but three instances, one being a field mouse, and the other two English sparrows.