sounds in your house one-third of which were probably the noises of a
burglar. Think, also, how you would feel if you knew that that burglar
was a murderer, and that that murderer was, in all likelihood, looking
for you, or some one just like you. Yet those birds were happy enough,
I fancy.

It was barely pale gray. It was cold and wan and washed, and
wonderfully clean and sweet, and wet with dews, when a lark climbed
invisibly into the sky and suddenly burst into song, next morning.
There was something strange and out of place, in a way, in this song,
breaking out of the night; and as it and another continued to break the
utter silence for ten minutes, it seemed rather as if it were still
night, and not really dawn at all. Dawn appeared to be waiting for
something else to give it authority, so to speak, and at the end of ten
minutes that something else came--the slim form of Blackie, streaking,
phantom-like, through the mist from the trench out in the field to the
summer-house in the garden. Here, mounted upon the very top, he stood
for a moment, as one clearing his throat before blowing a bugle, and
then, full, rich, deep, and flute-like, he lazily gave out the first
bars of his song. Instantly, almost as if it had been a signal, a
great tit-mouse sang out, "Tzur ping-ping! tzur ping-ping!" in
metallic, ringing notes; a thrush struck in with his brassy, clarion
challenge, thrush after thrush taking it up, till, with the clear
warble of robin and higher, squeaking notes of hedge-sparrow and wren
joining in, the wonderful first bars of the Dawn Hymn of the birds
rolled away over the fields to the faraway woods, and beyond.

Blackie sang on for a bit, in spite of the fact that people said that
it was not considered "the thing" for a blackbird with such domestic
responsibilities to sing. And two other blackbirds helped him to break