ligious
regularity, taking advantage of opportunities when father was very
busy, to join our companions, oftenest to hear the birds sing and hunt
their nests, glorying in the number we had discovered and called our
own. A sample of our nest chatter was something like this: Willie
Chisholm would proudly exclaim--"I ken (know) seventeen nests, and
you, Johnnie, ken only fifteen."

"But I wouldna gie my fifteen for your seventeen, for five of mine are
larks and mavises. You ken only three o' the best singers."

"Yes, Johnnie, but I ken six goldies and you ken only one. Maist of
yours are only sparrows and linties and robin-redbreasts."

Then perhaps Bob Richardson would loudly declare that he "kenned mair
nests than onybody, for he kenned twenty-three, with about fifty eggs
in them and mair than fifty young birds--maybe a hundred. Some of them
naething but raw gorblings but lots of them as big as their mithers
and ready to flee. And aboot fifty craw's nests and three fox dens."

"Oh, yes, Bob, but that's no fair, for naebody counts craw's nests and
fox holes, and then you live in the country at Belle-haven where ye
have the best chance."

"Yes, but I ken a lot of bumbee's nests, baith the red-legged and the
yellow-legged kind."

"Oh, wha cares for bumbee's nests!"

"Weel, but here's something! Ma father let me gang to a fox hunt, and
man, it was grand to see the hounds and the lang-legged horses lowpin
the dykes and burns and hedges!"

The nests, I fear, with the beautiful eggs and young birds, were
prized quite as highly as the songs of the glad parents, but no Scotch
boy that I know of ever failed to listen with enthusiasm to the songs
of the skylarks. Oftentimes on a broad meadow near Dunbar we stood for
hours enjoying their marvelous singing and soaring. From the grass
where the nest was hidden the male would suddenly rise, as straight as
if shot up, to a height of perhaps thirty or forty feet, and,
sustaining himself with rapid wing-beats, pour down the most delicious
melody, sweet and clear and strong, overflowing all bounds, then
suddenly he would soar higher again and again, ever higher and higher,
soaring and singing until lost to sight even on perfectly clear days,
and oftentimes in cloudy weather "far in the downy cloud," as the poet
says.

To test our eyes we often watched a lark until he seemed a faint speck
in the sky and finally passed beyond the keenest-sighted of us all. "I
see him yet!" we wou