ave us the trouble of wearing colored glasses.

[Illustration: _He passed the brightest hours dozing._]

Lively as Solomon was by night, all he asked during the day was peace
and quiet. He had it, usually. It was seldom that even any of the wild
folk knew where his nest was; and when he spent the day outside, in some
shady place, he didn't show much. His big feather-horns at such times
helped make him look like a ragged stub of a branch, or something else
he wasn't. It is possible for a person to go very close to an owl
without seeing him; and fortunately for Solomon, birds did not find him
every day. For when they did, they mobbed him.

One day, rather late in the summer, Cock Robin found him and sent forth
the alarm. To be sure, Solomon was doing no harm--just dozing, he was,
on a branch. But Cock Robin scolded and sputtered and called him mean
names; and the louder he talked, the more excited all the other birds in
the neighborhood became. Before long there were twenty angry kingbirds
and sparrows and other feather-folk, all threatening to do something
terrible to Solomon.

Now, Solomon had been having a good comfortable nap, with his feathers
all hanging loose, when Cock Robin chanced to alight on the branch near
him. He pulled himself up very thin and as tall as possible, with his
feathers drawn tight against his body. When the bird-mob got too near
him, he looked at them with his big round eyes, and said, "Oh!" in a
sweet high voice. But his soft tone did not turn away their wrath. They
came at him harder than ever. Then Solomon showed his temper, for he was
no coward. He puffed his feathers out till he looked big and round, and
he snapped his beak till the click of it could be heard by his
tormentors. And he hissed.

But twenty enemies were too many, and there was only one thing to be
done. Solomon did it. First thing those birds knew, they were scolding
at nothing at all; and way off in the darkest spot he could find in the
woods, a little owl settled himself quite alone and listened while the
din of a distant mob grew fainter and fainter and fainter, as one by one
those twenty birds discovered that there was no one left on the branch
to scold at.

If Solomon knew why the day birds bothered him so, he never told. He
could usually keep out of their way in the shady woods in the summer;
but in the winter, when the leaves were off all but the evergreen trees,
he had fewer places to hide in. Of course, there w