How the vireo scolded! and her mate!  He half sang his threat and defiance.  “Come, get out of this!  Come; do you hear?” he cried over and over, as I peeked into the nest.  It was a thick-walled, exquisite bit of a basket, rimmed round with green, growing moss, worked over with shredded bark and fragments of yellow wood from a punky stump across the stream, and suspended by spider-webs upon two parallel twigs about three feet above the water.  It was not consciously worked out by the birds, of course, but the patch of yellow-wood fragments on the side of the nest exactly matched the size and color of the fading cymes of arrow-wood blossoms all over the bush, so that I mistook the little domicile utterly on first parting the leaves.  A crow or a snake would never have discovered it from that side.

Paddling down, I was soon out of earshot of the scolding vireos, but the little cock’s vigorous, ringing song followed me to the head of the pond.  Flying heavily over from the meadows with folded neck and dangling legs came a little green heron—­the “poke.”  I spun round behind a big clump of elder to watch him; but he saw me, veered, gulped aloud, and pulled off with a rapid stroke up the creek.

As I turned, my eye fell upon a soft, yellowish something in the rose-bushes across the docks.  I was slow to believe.  It was too good to be credited all at once.  Within three paddle-lengths of my boat, in a patch of dark that must be a nest, stood my least bittern.

I sat still for several seconds, tasting the joy of my discovery and anticipating the look into the nest.  Then, upon my knees in the bow of the skiff, I pulled up by means of the stout dock-leaves until almost able to touch the bird, when she walked off down a dead stalk to the ground, clucking and growling at me.

It wasn’t a nest to boast of; but she might boast of her eggs, for there was more of eggs than of nest—­a great deal more.  A few sticks had been laid upon the ends of the bending rose-bushes, and this flimsy, inadequate platform was literally covered by the five dirty-white eggs.  The hen had to stand on the bushes straddling the nest in order to brood.  How she ever got as close to the nest as that without spilling its contents was hard to see; for I took an egg out and had the greatest difficulty in putting it back, so little room was there, so near to nothing for it to rest upon.

Working back into the channel, I gave the skiff to the easy current and drew slowly along toward the foot of the pond.

The sun had gone down behind the hill; the flame had faded from the sky, and over the rim of the circling slopes poured the soft, cool twilight, with a breeze as soft and cool, and a spirit that was prayer.  Drifting across the pond as gently as the gray half-light fell a shower of lint from the willow catkins.  The swallows had left; but from the leafy darkness of the copse in front of me, piercing the dreamy, foamy