ird, knew the laws of strategy, the
essence of which is surprise. He surprised everybody by suddenly
charging at the thrush on the lawn near him with a murderous ferocity
that took one's breath away. It certainly would have taken away that
of the other song-thrush, if our friend had not knocked it out of him
by the impact. By all the laws of precedence, of course, any one of
those others ought to have sent him, with his one leg, into headlong
retreat by merely threatening. But our friend was not concerned with
the laws of precedence, it seemed. He became a law unto himself, and a
most amazing "character" to boot. Also, he fought like several demons,
and, by sheer reckless fury, removed that dumbfounded rival of his from
the lawn in twenty-one hectic seconds.

Then he fed--it was enough only to glance, just glance, at the other
thrushes and the chaffinches, after that astounding exhibition of his
character. He fed, and, after he had stuffed full, he stood still a
little way off.

This was the signal for two of the thrushes in the spruce-fir to flap
down to the bread. One got there. The other saw what was coming, and
turned hastily back. The one that got there snatched up a piece of
bread. But he never ate it. Something hit him on the side. It felt
like the point of a skewer, but it was our thrush's beak, really, and
by the time he had recovered from that blow he found himself so busy
saving his eyesight that he was glad enough to drop his bread and go.

That, however, was not enough for our thrush. He appeared to "see
red," and with a terrible cruel, relentless "redness." He followed the
retreating foe to the spruce-fir, flying heavily and awkwardly by
reason of his smashed leg. He perched beside him on the branch he
settled upon, nearly overbalancing, and perilously swaying and
wobbling, with wings wildly flapping, and he drove that thrush to
another branch, with such a rain of pecks that the feathers flew. Nor
was even that enough. He followed up the attack, and hustled the
thrush from that other branch, so that he flew down the snowed-up road.
Then our cripple, spinning in a whirl of snow, hurled himself upon the
other thrush in the tree, and drove him out of it into the road.

But even that did not suffice him, for devils seemed to have possessed
him, and the thought of opposition sent him crazy. He blundered into
the privet-hedge, and unearthed a half-frozen _confrere_, who fled,
squawking pee