He gazed at her with a look that made her pulses beat; but she was determined not to permit him to drift back into that dangerous mood from which she had drawn him with such difficulty.

“One time you told me,” she said, “that the birds and squirrels were such good friends to you, that if you called them they would come to you like your dog.  I should love to see that.  Look!  There is a squirrel sitting on the limb of this very tree!  How saucy he looks!  How shy!  Bring him to me!  I command you!  You have said that I am your mistress; go, slave!”

Rising to her feet she pointed to the squirrel.  Her lithe form was outlined against the green background of the forest in a pose of exquisite grace and beauty, her eyes glowed with animation, and her lips smiled with the consciousness of power.  It was impossible to resist her.

He rose, looked in the direction toward which she pointed, and saw the squirrel cheeping among the branches.  Imitating its cries, he began to move slowly toward it.  The little creature pricked up its ears, cocked its head on one side, flirted its bushy tail and watched the approaching figure suspiciously.  As it drew nearer and nearer, he began to creep down the branches.  Stopping now and then to reconnoiter, he started forward again; paused; retreated; returned, and still continued to advance, until he was within a foot or two of David’s hand, which he examined first with one eye and then the other and made a motion as if to spring upon it.  Suddenly the spell was broken.  With a wild flirt of his tail and a loud outcry, he sprang up the tree and disappeared in the foliage.

David watched him until he had vanished, and then turned toward Pepeeta with a look of disappointment and chagrin.

“It is too bad,” she cried, hastening toward him sympathetically, “but see, there is a redbird on the top of that old birch tree.  Try again!  You will have better success this time, I am sure you will.”

He determined to make another experiment.  The brilliant songster was pouring out his heart in that fine cry of strength and hope which he sends resounding over hill and vale.  Suddenly hearing his own voice repeated to him in an echo sweet and pure as his own song, he fluttered his wings, peered this way and that, and sang again.  Once more the answering call resounded, true as an image in a mirror.

David now began to move with greater caution than before toward the little creature, who looked at him with curious glances.  Back and forth resounded the sweet antiphonal, and the bird hopped down a branch or two.  Neither of the actors in this woodland drama removed his eyes from the other, and the spectator watched them both with breathless interest.

Presently David lifted his hands—­the palms closed together in the form of a cup or nest.  The songster bent farther forward on the twig, and suddenly with a downward plunge shot straight toward them; but just as his tiny feet touched the fingers, turned as the squirrel had done, and uttering a loud cry of terror flew away.  David dropped his hands and his eyes.