It was only the passing of a tool-car in the subway underneath the cemetery, and the hammering of a workman at a forge in a niche of the tunnel.  But, rising out of the tombs, it was gruesome and unearthly in the night-quiet.

The sparrows did not mind the sound.  Maybe it ascended as a pleasant murmur to them and shaped their dreams, as dream-stuff drifts to their sweet-voiced cousins in the meadows with the lap and lave of the streams.  A carriage rolled by.  The clank of hoofs disturbed none of them.  Some one slammed the door of an apothecary-shop across the street, and hurried off.  Not a sparrow stirred.

I was trying to see whether the birds slept with their heads beneath their wings.  Apparently they did, for I could not make out a head, though some of the sleepers hung over the street within ten feet of the lamp-post.  But they were all above the light, with only their breasts out of the shadows, and to be certain I must make a bird move.  Finding that the noises were not likely to arouse them, I threw a stick against one of the laden limbs.  There were heads then, plenty of them, and every one, evidently, had been turned back and buried in the warm wing-coverts.

My stick hit very near the toes of one of the sparrows, and he flew.  There was a twitter, then a stir all over the tree; but nothing further happening, they tucked in their heads again and went back to bed.

I waited.  At four o’clock they still slept.  The moon had swung out from behind the high buildings and now hung just above the slender spire of Park Street Church, looking down into the deep, narrow street gulch.  A cat picked her way among the graves, sprang noiselessly to the top of a flat tomb beneath the sparrows, and watched with me.  The creature brought the wilderness with her.  After all, this was not so far removed from the woods.  In the empty street, beneath the silent, shuttered walls, with something still of the mystery of the night winds in the bare trees, the scene, for an instant, was touched with the spell of the dark and the untamed.

After a swift warming walk of fifteen minutes I returned to the roost.  There were signs of waking now:  a flutter here, a twitter there, then quiet again, with no general movement until half-past four, when the city lights were shut off.  Then, instantly, from a dozen branches sounded loud, clear chirps, and every sparrow opened his eyes.  The incandescent bulbs about the border of the roost were moon and stars to them, lights in the firmament of their heaven to divide the night from the day.  When they blazed forth, it was evening—­bedtime; when they went out, it was morning—­the time to wake up.

The softness of dusk, how unknown to these city dwellers! and the fresh sweet beauty of the dawn!

Morning must have begun to break along near four o’clock, for the cold gray across the sky was already passing into pearl.  The country birds had been up half an hour, I am sure.  However, the old cemetery was wide enough awake now.  There was chirping everywhere.  It grew louder and more general every moment, till shortly the six thousand voices, and more, were raised in the cheerful din—­the matin, if you please, for as yet only a few of the birds were fighting.