That night his sleep was disturbed by very unpleasant dreams. He had visions of numbers of little boys who kept coming to look at his nest, and who pulled the bough down to the ground. Then he saw the eggs rolling out slowly one after the other on to the lawn. And then he would wake with a start to find that after all it was only a dream, and would see the bright moonlight shining on the dewy grass, and hear afar off the hoarse trill of the night-jar, or the boding screech of the great white owl. All that night he could not help feeling nervous, and he was very glad indeed when the first streaks of dawn became visible in the far east. It was a bright spring morning, and as he and his sprightly little wife hopped nimbly about on the daisy-spangled lawn, ere the dew had disappeared from the little pink and white flowers, and as they here and there picked up a worm or an insect, he felt wonderfully refreshed, indeed by the time he had taken his morning bath, and had plumed his feathers, he was quite himself again. The thirteen days which now followed were very important ones; for, during that time, our Blackbird's patient young wife sat almost uninterruptedly upon her nest. She stole away for a few moments to the neighbouring hedgerows for breakfast or dinner; but she was never happy till she was back again to her precious charge. It was at this time that the Blackbird poured forth his very best music. He had never sung so many nor such varied songs before; now that his partner could not go about with him, he had so much to tell her of his rambles and of course he told it all in song. He did not always perch on their own bush. He was afraid that if he did so he might attract too much attention, but from the bough of any tree close at hand he cheered her heart with his beautiful melodies. [Illustration: THE ROBIN'S NEST.] Then it was that he told his wife of the green hedgerows where the golden, star-shaped blossoms of the celandine were luxuriant, and where the shy primroses were just beginning to show their pale heads. He would sing of the blackthorn whose snowy blooms were then just peeping out, and of the hawthorn already covered with its tender green leaves. He told her, and this was a profound secret, of the nest of their good friend, the Robin, which was very cunningly concealed at the top of the ivy. It was a soft, cosy little nest, not plastered with mud as theirs was, but lined with silky hair. The Robin had shown him five little pale eggs, white spotted with brown, at the bottom of the nest, half hidden by the soft hair.