up, and were peering down at the grappling maniacs. Also two blue
titmice had just arrived to see what was up, and a sparrow and one
great tit were hurrying to the spot--all on Blackie's "beat," on
Blackie's very own hunting-ground. Apparently a trouble of that kind
concerned everybody, or everybody thought it did.

Blackie arrived upon the back of the upper and, presumably, winning
thrush with a bang that removed that worthy to the ground quite
quickly, and in a heap. The second thrush fetched up on a lower
branch, and by the time the first had ceased to see stars he had
apparently regained his sanity. He beheld Blackie above him, and fled.
Perhaps he had met Blackie, professionally, before, I don't know. He
fled, anyway, and Blackie helped him to flee faster than he bargained
for.

By the time Blackie had got back, the first thrush was sitting on a
branch in a dazed and silly condition, like a fowl that has been waked
up in the night. Blackie presented him with a dig gratis from his
orange dagger, and he nearly fell in fluttering to another branch. And
Blackie flew away, chuckling. He knew that, so far as that thrush was
concerned, there would be no desire to see any more fighting for some
time.

But, all the same, Blackie was not pleased. He was worked off his feet
providing rations for three ugly youngsters in a magnificently designed
and exquisitely worked and interwoven edifice, interlined with rigid
cement of mud, which we, in an off-hand manner, simply dismiss as "A
nest." The young were his children; they might have been
white-feathered angels with golden wings, by the value he put on them.
The thrush episode was only a portent, and not the first. He had no