In a few moments the chat shouted a call so near that it fairly startled me. From that he went on to make his ordinary protest, but, as happened nearly every time, I was not able to see him. I saw something--something that took my breath away. A shadowy form creeping stealthily through the shrubs five or six feet from me. It glided across the opening in front, and in a moment went to the bush I was watching. In silence, but with evident excitement, it moved about, approached the nest, and in a few seconds flew quickly across the path in plain sight, holding in its mouth something white which was large for its beak. I was reminded of an English sparrow carrying a piece of bread as big as his head, a sight familiar to every one. In a minute or two the same bird, or his twin, came to the nest again and disappeared on the other side. When I left my place to go home, I looked with misgivings into the nest on which I had built so many hopes. Lo! it was empty! Now I identified that stealthy visitor absolutely, but I shall never name him. I have never heard him accused of nest-robbing, and I shall not make the charge; for I am convinced that the chat had deserted the nest, and that this abstracter of eggs knew it, and simply took the good things the gods threw in his way--as would the best of us. After that unfortunate ending the chat disappeared from the little park; but a week later I came upon him, or his voice, in a private and rarely visited pasture down the road, where many clumps of small trees and much low growth offered desirable nesting-places. He made his usual protest, and feeling that I had been the cause of the tragedy of the first nest, though I had grieved over it as much as the owners could, the least I could do, to show my regret, was to take myself and my curiosity out of his neighborhood. So I retired at once, and left the whole broad pasture to the incorrigible chat family, who, I hope, succeeded at last in enriching the world by half a dozen more of their bewitching kind. V. A FEAST OF FLOWERS. When first the crocus thrusts its point of gold Up through the still snow-drifted garden mould, And folded green things in dim woods unclose Their crinkled spears, a sudden tremor goes Into my veins and makes me kith and kin To every wild-born thing that thrills and blows. T. B. ALDRICH. My feast of flowers began before I entered Colorado. For half the breadth of Kansas the banks of the railroad were heavenly blue with clustered blossoms of the spiderwort. I remember clumps of this flower in my grandmother's old-fashioned garden, but my wildest dreams never pictured miles of it, so profuse that, looking backward from the train, the track looked like threads of steel in a broad ribbon of blue.