he would have naught to do with me, fled as I approached, abandoned
the evergreens altogether and sat on the naked tree-tops, as much
as threatening to quit the place altogether if I did not leave him
in peace. Surely he is the shyest of his kind, and, to my fancy,
the most beautiful; and therefore Nature seems to have stored him
with extra caution towards archenemy.

But in the old human way I have taken advantage of his necessities.
The north wind has been by friend against him. I have called
in the aid of sleets and snows, have besieged him in his white
castle behind the glittering array of his icicles with threats of
starvation. So one day, dropping like a glowing coal down among
the other birds, he snatched a desperate hasty meal from the public
poor-house table that I had spread under the trees.

It is the first surrender that decides. Since then some progress
has been made in winning his confidence, but the struggle going on
in his nature is plain enough still. At times he will rush away
from me in utter terror; at others he lets me draw a little nearer,
a little nearer, without moving form a limb; and now, after a month
of persuasion, he begins to discredit the experience which he has
inherited from centuries upon centuries of ancestors. In all that
I have done I have tried to say to him: "Don't judge me by mankind
in general. With me you are safe. I pledge myself to defend you
from enemies, high and low."

This had not escaped the notice of Georgiana at the window, and more
than once she had let her work drop to watch my patient progress
and to bestow upon me a rewarding smile. Is there nearly always
sadness in it, or is the sadness in my eyes? If Georgiana's brother