willow, does, under proper conditions, so embrace one's shoulders and
curl about one's legs and make itself familiar. But the feud was on,
and as a permanency, though, on this particular afternoon, the young
man, as he stood there in the doorway, had no thought of snakes.
Something else this summer was attracting much of his attention. He
had a family on his hands.




CHAPTER III.

BOY, BIRD AND SNAKE.

The young man's family was not large, but a part of it was young, and
he felt the responsibility. The song-sparrow is the very light and
gladness of the woods and fields. There are rarer singers, and birds
of more brilliant plumage, but he is the constant quantity. His notes
may not rival those mellow, brief ones of the blue-birds in early
spring, so sweet in their quaint inflection, which suggest all hope,
and are so striking because heard while snow may be yet upon the
ground; he may not have the wild abandon of the bobolink with that
tinkle and gurgle and thrill; he is no pretentious songster, like a
score of other birds, but he is a great part of the soul of early
summer, for he is telling, morning, noon and night, how good the world
is, how he approves of the sunshine, and how everything is all right!
And so the young man approved much of the song-sparrow, and was
interested in the movements of all his kind.

One day in May, the boy had noted something in the clump of bushes,