er morning weaving my thoughts together and looking
out of the great barn doorway into sunlit fields, the junco wove
her straws and horsehairs, and deposited there on three
successive days her three exquisite eggs.

Why the bird departed so widely from the usual habits of
nest-building of her species, who can tell? I had never before
seen a junco's nest except on the ground in remote fields, or in
mossy banks by the side of mountain roads. This nest is the
finest to be found upon the ground, its usual lining of horsehair
makes its interior especially smooth and shapely, and the nest in
the haymow showed only a little falling-off, as is usually the
case in the second nest of the season. The songs of the birds,
the construction of their nests, and the number of their eggs
taper off as the season wanes.

The junco impresses me as a fidgety, emphatic, feather-edged sort
of bird; the two white quills in its tail which flash out so
suddenly on every movement seem to stamp in this impression. My
junco was a little nervous at first and showed her white quills,
but she soon grew used to my presence, and would alight upon the
chair which I kept for callers, and upon my hammock-ropes.

When an artist came to paint my portrait amid such rustic
surroundings, the bird only eyed her a little suspiciously at
first, and then went forward with her own affairs. One night the
wind blew the easel with its canvas over against the haymow where
the nest was placed, but the bird was there on her eggs in the
morning. Her wild instincts did not desert her in one respect, at
least: when I would flush her from the nest she would drop down
to the floor and with spread plumage and fluttering movements
seek for a moment to decoy me away from the nest, after the habit
of most ground-builders. The male came about the barn frequently
with three or four other juncos, which I suspect were the first or
June brood of the pair, now able to take care of themselves, but
still held together by the family instinct, as often happens in
the case of some other birds, such as bluebirds and chickadees.

My little mascot hatched all her eggs, and all went well with
mother and young until, during my absence of three or four days,
some night-prowler, probably a rat, plundered the nest, and the
little summer idyl in the heart of the old barn abruptly ended. I
saw the juncos no more.

While I was so closely associated with the junco in the old barn
I had a good cha