cover, anyway, and Blackie, who was born to the leafy green ways, knew
that.

Blackie's yells had called up, as if by magic, a motley crowd of
chaffinches, hedge-sparrows, wrens, robins, &c., from nowhere at all,
and they could be seen whirling in skirmishing order--not too
close--about the retreating foe. Blackie himself needed no more
sparrow-hawk for a bit, and preferred to sit and look on. If the
little fools chose to risk their lives in the excitement of mobbing,
let them. His business was too urgent.

Twenty lightning glances around seemed to show that no death was on the
lurk near by. Also, a quick inspection of other birds' actions--he
trusted to them a good deal--appeared to confirm this.

Then he flew down to the lawn, and almost immediately had a worm by the
tail. Worms object to being so treated, and this one protested
vigorously. Also, when pulled, they may come in halves. So Blackie
did not pull _too_ much. He jumped up, and, while he was in the air,
scraped the worm up with his left foot, or it may have been both feet.
The whole thing was done in the snap of a finger, however, almost too
quickly to be seen.

The worm, once up, was a dead one. Blackie seemed to kill it so
quickly as almost to hide the method used. In a few seconds more it
was a carved worm in three or four pieces--an unnice sight, but far
more amenable to reason that way.

Blackie was in rather long grass, and nerve-rackingly helpless, by the
same token. He could not see anything that was coming. Wherefore