A sparrow-hawk, worried with a family of her own, took occasion to chase him as he flew, and he arrived in among the young lime-trees that backed the garden, switchbacking—­that was one of his tricks of escape, made possible by a long tail—­and yelling fit to raise the world.  The sparrow-hawk’s skinny yellow claw, thrust forward, was clutching thin air an inch behind his central tail-feathers, but that was all she got of him—­just thin air.  There was no crash as he hurled into the green maze; but she, failing to swerve exactly in time, made a mighty crash, and retired somewhat dazed, thankful that she retained two whole wings to fly with.  There is no room for big-winged sparrow-hawks in close cover, anyway, and Blackie, who was born to the leafy green ways, knew that.

Blackie’s yells had called up, as if by magic, a motley crowd of chaffinches, hedge-sparrows, wrens, robins, &c., from nowhere at all, and they could be seen whirling in skirmishing order—­not too close—­about the retreating foe.  Blackie himself needed no more sparrow-hawk for a bit, and preferred to sit and look on.  If the little fools chose to risk their lives in the excitement of mobbing, let them.  His business was too urgent.

Twenty lightning glances around seemed to show that no death was on the lurk near by.  Also, a quick inspection of other birds’ actions—­he trusted to them a good deal—­appeared to confirm this.

Then he flew down to the lawn, and almost immediately had a worm by the tail.  Worms object to being so treated, and this one protested vigorously.  Also, when pulled, they may come in halves.  So Blackie did not pull too much.  He jumped up, and, while he was in the air, scraped the worm up with his left foot, or it may have been both feet.  The whole thing was done in the snap of a finger, however, almost too quickly to be seen.

The worm, once up, was a dead one.  Blackie seemed to kill it so quickly as almost to hide the method used.  In a few seconds more it was a carved worm in three or four pieces—­an unnice sight, but far more amenable to reason that way.

Blackie was in rather long grass, and nerve-rackingly helpless, by the same token.  He could not see anything that was coming.  Wherefore every few seconds he had to stand erect and peer over the grass-tops.  It made no difference to the worm, however; it was carved just the same.

Blackie now hopped farther on in search of more worms, but found a big piece of bread instead.  It was really the hen-chaffinch who found the bread, and he who commandeered it from her.  Now he disclosed one fact, and that was that bread would do for his children as well as worms.  Anyhow, he stuffed his beak about half up with bread, returned for the pieces of worm, collected these, and retired up into the black cover of a fir-tree.