“He’ll be well now,” said Thady, “well as Uncle Pat’s pig when it got into an orchard of cider apples.” So we shut the old door of the leper’s chamber carefully behind us, and descended the steps—overgrown with budding valerian.

FRESH NESTS TO SEE

“They be wonderfully dressy, be swallows,” piped Thady, “in the building of their nests. There’s nought that comes amiss to them. Shreds of gauze, scraps of muslin, bits of mud, in fact,” he added, “any iligant thing that they can meet with, they dart off with in a minute. ’Tis wonderful the fancy and the invention of the craythures. In August they’ll go, this sort; but where they go there’s few as knows.”

I was about to return to the Abbey, when Thady stopped me. “I’ve somethin’ else to show you, somethin’ as you’ll be pleased wid,” he said.

“What is it?”

“A real pretty bird,” was Thady’s answer. “None of yer common kinds. The cock is the bonniest little fellow I have ever seen; fire snaps, I call ’em,—that’s the name that Ben O’Mally called one that we saw together near Birmingham. He’s about the size of a robin, but ’tis a more spirited tail that he has, a black waistcoat, and a lavender head. None of your mud-pie midgeon tits, but a real gay hopper. About the bonniest little fellow that I have ever seen. He’s got a flash of brightness about him, like the foreign flower that Mister Burbidge declared he would whip the life out of me if I touched. Jump the flame, the blazer, and kitty brantail, I’ve heard him called in different places; but call ’em what they will, they all think a lot of him.”

Then I asked Thady about the plumage of the little hen.

“Oh, the missus,” answered Thady. “Well she’s purty but not so fine as her mate. She’s a bitter duller, and the fire has gone out of her tail.”

“Where is the nest?” I asked.

Thady did not answer, but walked across the ruined church to a broken column, and there, sure enough, in a little hole screened from the winds by a spray of budding eglantine, I found the nest of the redstart. The eggs, of which there are four, reminded me of those of the hedge-sparrow; but the blue was fainter, and on one or two I noticed a few dim brownish specks. Then we retired quickly, for hovering close by was the brilliant little cock bird himself. How beautiful he was! Like a vision of the tropics. The redstart is never found in great numbers in Shropshire, but every year there is a pair that comes and builds somewhere in our ruined church. Three years ago they built in a wall, last year in a crevice in the crypt, and this year in a ruined column.