d protector at her
feet. When I came in sight she beckoned eagerly but silently, and I knew
she had found something; probably the nest, I thought. As quietly as
might be under the circumstances (namely, a passage through dead leaves,
brittle twigs, unexpected hollows, etc.), I crept to her side, planted
my camp-stool near hers, and sat down, in obedience to her imperious
gesture.

"Now look," she whispered, pointing to a nest in plain sight.

"Why that's the redstart nest we saw yesterday from the road," I
answered in the same tone, somewhat disappointed, it must be said, for
redstart nests were on about every third sapling in the woods.

"Yes; but see what's going on," she added, excitedly.

"I see," I replied; "there is a young bird on the edge of the nest and
its mother is feeding it;" and I was about to lower my glass and ask
what there was surprising about that, when she went on:--

"Keep looking! There! Who's that?"

"Why that's--why--that's a chestnut-sided warbler! and--what?--he feeds
the same baby!" I gasped, interested now as much as she.

"There!" she exclaimed, triumphantly, "I wanted you to see that with
your own eyes, since you scorn to look at the warblers. He has been
doing that ever since I left you. I couldn't bear to let him out of my
sight!"

At that moment the warbler appeared again, and the wise redstart baby,
who at least knew enough to take a good thing when it offered, opened
his ever-ready mouth for the bit of a worm he brought.

But lo! Madam, who had flown the moment before, returned in hot haste,
and flung herself upon that small philanthropist as if he had brought
poison; he vanished.

Here was indeed a queer complication! It was a redstart nest without
doubt, but who owned the baby? If he were a redstart, why did Mamma
refuse help in her hard work, and why did the chestnut-sided insist on
helping? If he were a chestnut-sided infant, how did he come in a
redstart nest, and what had the redstart to do with him?

These were the problems with which we had to grapple, and we settled
ourselves to the work. We placed our seats against neighboring saplings,
for backs, and we first critically examined that nest. It was surely a
redstart's, though at an unusual height, perhaps twenty-five feet, as we
had observed the day before when we had both noted in our books that we
saw the male feeding the young. Even had the nest not been so plainly a
redstart's, the air of that mother was unmis