it was plain that his begging was a mere pretense,--he
was perfectly well able to look out for himself. Through the whole of
these scenes not one of the birds, old or young, had paid the slightest
attention to me, though I was not ten feet from them.

During the time I had been so absorbed in my delightful study of
domestic life in the ouzel family, the other interesting resident of the
canyon--the elusive canyon wren--had been forgotten. Now, as I noticed
that the day was waning, I thought of him again, and, tearing myself
away from the enticing picture, leaving the pretty baby to his own
amusements, I returned to the famous Pillars, and planted myself before
my rock, resolved to stay there till the bird appeared.

No note came to encourage me, but, gazing steadily upward, after a time
I noticed something that looked like a fly running along the wall.
Bringing my glass to my eyes, I found that it was a bird, and one of the
white-throated family I so longed to see. She--for her silence and her
ways proclaimed her sex--was running about where appeared to be nothing
but perpendicular rock, flirting her tail after the manner of her race,
as happy and as unconcerned as if several thousand feet of sheer cliff
did not stretch between her and the brook at its foot. Her movements
were jerky and wren-like, and every few minutes she flitted into a tiny
crevice that seemed, from my point of view, hardly large enough to admit
even her minute form. She was dressed like the sweet singer of
yesterday, and the door she entered so familiarly was the same I had
seen him interested in. I guessed that she was his mate.

The bird seemed to be gathering from the rock something which she
constantly carried into the hole. Possibly there were nestlings in that
snug and inaccessible home. To discover if my conjectures were true, I
redoubled my vigilance, though it was neck-breaking work, for so narrow
was the canyon at that point that I could not get far enough away for a
more level view.

Sometimes the bustling little wren flew to the top of the wall, about
twenty feet above her front door, as it looked to me (it may have been
ten times that). Over the edge she instantly disappeared, but in a few
minutes returned to her occupation on the rock. Upon the earth beneath
her sky parlor she seemed never to turn her eyes, and I began to fear
that I should get no nearer view of the shy cliff-dweller.

Finally, however, the caprice seized the tanta