Then he fed—­it was enough only to glance, just glance, at the other thrushes and the chaffinches, after that astounding exhibition of his character.  He fed, and, after he had stuffed full, he stood still a little way off.

This was the signal for two of the thrushes in the spruce-fir to flap down to the bread.  One got there.  The other saw what was coming, and turned hastily back.  The one that got there snatched up a piece of bread.  But he never ate it.  Something hit him on the side.  It felt like the point of a skewer, but it was our thrush’s beak, really, and by the time he had recovered from that blow he found himself so busy saving his eyesight that he was glad enough to drop his bread and go.

That, however, was not enough for our thrush.  He appeared to “see red,” and with a terrible cruel, relentless “redness.”  He followed the retreating foe to the spruce-fir, flying heavily and awkwardly by reason of his smashed leg.  He perched beside him on the branch he settled upon, nearly overbalancing, and perilously swaying and wobbling, with wings wildly flapping, and he drove that thrush to another branch, with such a rain of pecks that the feathers flew.  Nor was even that enough.  He followed up the attack, and hustled the thrush from that other branch, so that he flew down the snowed-up road.  Then our cripple, spinning in a whirl of snow, hurled himself upon the other thrush in the tree, and drove him out of it into the road.

But even that did not suffice him, for devils seemed to have possessed him, and the thought of opposition sent him crazy.  He blundered into the privet-hedge, and unearthed a half-frozen confrere, who fled, squawking peevishly, leaving one tail-feather in our friend’s beak; and finally he flew down to the road.

In the road, he first of all buried his face in snow, then fell on his side, deep snow not being, he discovered, an ideal medium in which to get about on one leg.  During that performance his rivals could have abolished him five times over if they had had the heart to unite.  But they seemed to think otherwise, and had not the heart for anything.  They sat still, with that helpless abandon that afflicts fowls and other birds in disaster, and they seemed about to starve practically on the spot, if left alone.

Our thrush, however, did not leave them alone.  They were a direct threat to his only line of communication with life, so to speak—­namely, food.  Wherefore, either they or he must go.  Soon he found that cart-ruts make convenient roads for the birds in the snow, or perhaps it was the chaffinches, who were following one another in lines along the cart-ruts, who showed him.

Then and there, in the road, our thrush seemed to go berserk.  He landed upon the thrush nearest to him, spread-eagled and hammering like a feathered devil.  There was a whirl of brown feathers and finely powdered snow for about ten seconds, at the end of which time that other thrush detached himself and fled, oven as his conqueror hurled himself upon the next bird.