Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/329

 in the stead of him and his came back the truants, the birds which, by the law laid down by naturalists, could claim the country as a home, since it was there they made their nests.

Why some went, some stayed, was a strange, unending perplexity to Musa, and a perplexity indeed it is.

Why does the blue thrush stay on the same spot all the year long and all the years he lives? and why does his brother the stone thrush go off on autumnal equinoxials as far as the White Nile? Why indeed? The birds can laugh at science; their secrets none shall know.

Musa sorely missed her friends of winter, but the budding of the crocus and the daffodil brought her many others in their stead, and soon she grew reconciled to the new comers and knew their looks and haunts and ways as well as those of their predecessors.

With earliest break of the year the red buzzard came, so much more cowardly and cruel than his cousin the python-slayer, to watch all the summer long warily amidst the water-stars, and the pond plaintain, to seize some unwary moorhen, or snatch a