I began my search by trying to follow the wily singer, who appeared to understand, and regard it as a joke. First he led me up the lane, then I had to follow down the lane; the next minute he shouted from the blackberry patch, and I had to go around the wall to reach him. Alas, the race between wings and feet is hopeless! I abandoned that plan, and resolved to go to a grove not heretofore invaded, being absolutely impenetrable from undergrowth. My way led across a cornfield, over stone walls, through thickets and bushes everywhere. Many other birds I startled, and at last came a chat's "mew" from a wild jungle of ailantus and brambles, which nothing less effective than an axe could pass through. But on I went around the edge, the chat's call accompanying me, and at the point where it sounded loudest I dropped to a humble position, hoping that eyes might enter further than feet. Nothing to be seen or heard but a flit of wings. The singer tried to lead me away, but I was serious and not to be coaxed, and all his man[oe]uvres failed. I seated myself on the ground, for now I heard low, soft baby calls, and determined to stay there till the crack of doom, or till I had solved the mystery of those calls. But I did not stay so long, and I did not see the babies. An hour or two of watching weakened my determination, and slowly and sadly I wended my way homeward; admiring, while I execrated, the too, too clever tactics of the chat. But I did make one discovery,--that a sound which had puzzled me, like the distant blow of an axe against a tree, must be added to the _répertoire_ of the chat mother. I saw her utter it, and saw the strange movement of the throat in doing so. The sound seemed to come up in bubbles, which distended her throat on the outside exactly as if they had been beads as big as shoe buttons. I was not to be wholly disappointed. Fate had one crumb of consolation for me, for I saw at last a chat baby. He was a quiet, well-behaved little fellow, with streaks on throat and breast, and dull yellow underparts. His manners were subdued, and gave no hint of the bumptious acrobat he might live to be. While the vagaries of chat life had been drawing me down toward the lane, the feathered world on the other side of the house had not been idle; and glad now to avoid the ruined lane and the deserted berry patch, I turned my attention to a bird drama nearer home, the story of which must have a chapter to itself. VI. THE "BIRD OF THE MUSICAL WING."