This is his happiest season; a few days now, and he will hear the
call of his young in the nest.

I shut myself in my workshop in the yard this morning. I did not
wish my servants to know. In there I made a bird-trap such as I
had often used when a boy. And late this afternoon I went to town
and bought a bird-cage. I was afraid the merchant would misjudge
me, and explained. He scanned my face silently. To-morrow I will
snare the red-bird down behind the pines long enough to impress on
his memory a life-long suspicion of every such artifice, and then
I will set him free again in his wide world of light. Above all
things, I must see to it that he does not wound himself or have
the least feather broken.


It is far past midnight now, and I have not slept or wished for
slumber.

Constantly since darkness came on I have been watching Georgiana's
window for the light of her candle, but there has been no kindly
glimmer yet. The only radiance shed upon the gloom outside comes
from the heavens. Great cage-shaped white clouds are swung up to
the firmament, and within these pale, gentle, imprisoned lightnings
flutter feebly to escape, fall back, rise, and try again and again,
and fail.

. . . _A little after dark this evening I carried the red-bird
over to Georgiana_. . . .

I have seen her so little of late that I did not know she had