pursuit. It seemed that the little creature could not stop
if she would, and as for the Cardinal, he was in that chase to remain
until his last heart-beat. It was a question how the frightened bird
kept in advance. She was visibly the worse for this ardent courtship.
Two tail feathers were gone, and there was a broken one beating from
her wing. Once she had flown too low, striking her head against a rail
until a drop of blood came, and she cried pitifully. Several times the
Cardinal had cornered her, and tried to hold her by a bunch of
feathers, and compel her by force to listen to reason; but she only
broke from his hold and dashed away a stricken thing, leaving him half
dead with longing and remorse.

But no matter how baffled she grew, or where she fled in her headlong
flight, the one thing she always remembered, was not to lead the
Cardinal into the punishment that awaited him in Rainbow Bottom.
Panting for breath, quivering with fear, longing for well-concealed
retreats, worn and half blinded by the disasters of flight through
strange country, the tired bird beat her aimless way; but she would
have been torn to pieces before she would have led her magnificent
pursuer into the wrath of his enemies.

Poor little feathered creature! She had been fleeing some kind of
danger all her life. She could not realize that love and protection
had come in this splendid guise, and she fled on and on.

Once the Cardinal, aching with passion and love, fell behind that she
might rest, and before he realized that another bird was close, an
impudent big relative of his, straying from the Limberlost, entered the
race and pursued her so hotly that with a note of utter panic she
wheeled and darted back to the Cardinal for protection. When to the
rush of rage that possessed him at the sight of a rival was added the
knowledge that she was seeking him in her extremity, such a mighty wave
of anger swept the Cardinal that he appeared twice his real size. Like
a flaming brand of vengeance he struck that Limberlost upstart, and
sent him rolling to earth, a mass of battered feathers. With beak and
claw he made his attack, and when he so utterly demolished his rival
that he hopped away trembling, with dishevelled plumage stained with
his own blood, the Cardinal remembered his little love and hastened
back, confidently hoping for his reward.

She was so securely hidden, that although he went searching, calling,
pleading, he found no