t in a
full, loud, and distinct voice--"Cuckoo!" and again two or three times
over--"Cuckoo!"

"Halloa!" said Flutethroat, ceasing his worm hunt, "who is that?"

"Cuckoo," said Spottleover, dropping a snail; "what does that mean?"

And all through the garden there ran a thrill of excitement, for the
thrush's cousin flew up to the birds who had collected together, and
told them he had seen the thief in the act of taking an egg, and he had
flown into the cedar-tree. He was a long ugly bird in a striped
waistcoat, and--

But the narrative was interrupted by the long mellow call of--

"Cuckoo!"

"What's it mean?" chorused the birds.

"Oh, that's his impudence," said the old owl, winking and blinking, for
he had been roused out of his sleep by the new call.

"Come now, that won't do; we don't want you meddling now, old
mousetrap," said the birds; "none of your night-birds here." Saying
which, they pecked and buffeted old Shoutnight to such a degree that he
was glad to shuffle off to his hole behind the ivied chimney-stack.

All this while the cry kept coming out of the cedar, "Cuckoo! cuckoo!"

"It's Dutch," said a greenfinch, looking very knowing.

"No, it isn't; he comes from Spain, I know," said the goldfinch.

"Chiswick, Chiswick," shouted the sparrow.

"Tchah," said the jackdaw.

"Twit, twit," said the nuthatch.

"Little bit o' bread and no cheese," said the yellowhammer.

"Ah, we'll `twit' him with his theft," said the sage old starling; "and
it's neither bread nor cheese he'll get here. He's a thief; a cheat;
a--"

"Quack, quack," cried a duck from the pond.

"Ah! and a quack," continued the starling, and then he grew so excited
that the rest of his speech was lost in sputtering, chattering, and
fizzing; and all the birds burst out laughing at him, for all his little
sharp shining feathers were standing up all over his head, and he looked
so comical that they could not contain themselves, but kept on
tittering, till all of a sudden--

"Cuckoo!" said the stranger, and came right into view.

"He's a foreigner," shouted the birds; "give it him;" and away they
went, mobbing the strange bird; flying at him, over him, under him,
round and round him, darting in and out in all directions, and pecking
him so sharply that he was obliged to make signs for mercy; when he was
immediately taken into custody by the starlings, and made to go into a
hole in the cedar, where a jackdaw kept watch while they m