In a few days the wandering younglings were up in front of the house, where we could watch the parents drop into the grass with food; and where, of course, they were safe from anybody's intrusion. I had one more encounter with his lordship. After the young had been out a week or more, they seemed in their moving about to get back near to the old place. As I took my usual walk one evening, down the carriage drive to the gate, I found two pairs of bobolinks on one tree; the two mothers with food in their mouths, evidently intended for somebody down in the grass; and the two fathers, very much disturbed at my appearance. They greeted me with severe and reproving "chacks," and finally favored me with the most musical call I have heard from the sweet-voiced bird of the meadow. It was like "kee-lee!" in loud and rich tones, and it was many times repeated. I assured them that I had no wish to disturb their little ones; though, if I had been able to lift the whole grassy cover to peep at the two small families hidden there, I fear I should have yielded to the temptation. Our bird had been somewhat erratic in making his home far from his fellows,--so social are these birds even in nesting-time; but now he was joined by more of his kind from the meadows below, and to the beautiful waving carpet of green, dotted here and there with great bunches of black-eyed Susans and devil's paint-brushes (what names!), and sprinkled all over with daisies, now beginning to look a little disheveled and wild, was added the tantalizing interest of dozens of little folk running about under its shelter. The next week brought to the meadow what must seem from the bobolink point of view almost the end of the world. Men and horses and great rattling machines, armed with sharp knives, which laid low every stem of grass and flower, and let the light of the sun in upon the haunts and the nests of the bobolink babies. Happily, however, not all the earth is meadow and subject to this annual catastrophe; and I think the whole flock took refuge in a pasture where they were safe from the hay-cutters, and had for neighbors only the cows and the crow babies. XVI. THE TANAGER'S NEST.