“They’re in the middle of a swamp now” said Freckles.  “Do you suppose there is any chance of them staying with me chickens?  If they do, they’ll be about the queerest I have; but I tell you, sir, I am finding some plum good ones.  There’s a new kind over at the mouth of the creek that uses its wings like feet and walks on all fours.  It travels like a thrashing machine.  There’s another, tall as me waist, with a bill a foot long, a neck near two, not the thickness of me wrist and an elegant color.  He’s some blue and gray, touched up with black, white, and brown.  The voice of him is such that if he’d be going up and standing beside a tree and crying at it a few times he could be sawing it square off.  I don’t know but it would be a good idea to try him on the gang, sir.”

McLean laughed.  “Those must be blue herons, Freckles,” he said.  “And it doesn’t seem possible, but your description of the big black birds sounds like genuine black vultures.  They are common enough in the South.  I’ve seen them numerous around the lumber camps of Georgia, but I never before heard of any this far north.  They must be strays.  You have described perfectly our nearest equivalent to a branch of these birds called in Europe Pharaoh’s Chickens, but if they are coming to the Limberlost they will have to drop Pharaoh and become Freckles’ Chickens, like the remainder of the birds; won’t they?  Or are they too odd and ugly to interest you?”

“Oh, not at all, at all!” cried Freckles, bursting into pure brogue in his haste.  “I don’t know as I’d be calling them exactly pretty, and they do move like a rocking-horse loping, but they are so big and fearless.  They have a fine color for black birds, and their feet and beaks seem so strong.  You never saw anything so keen as their eyes!  And fly?  Why, just think, sir, they must be flying miles straight up, for they were out of sight completely when the feather fell.  I don’t suppose I’ve a chicken in the swamp that can go as close heaven as those big, black fellows, and then——­”

Freckles’ voice dragged and he hesitated.

“Then what?” interestedly urged McLean.

“He was loving her so,” answered Freckles in a hushed voice.  “I know it looked awful funny, and I laughed and told on him, but if I’d taken time to think I don’t believe I’d have done it.  You see, I’ve seen such a little bit of loving in me life.  You easily can be understanding that at the Home it was every day the old story of neglect and desertion.  Always people that didn’t even care enough for their children to keep them, so you see, sir, I had to like him for trying so hard to make her know how he loved her.  Of course, they’re only birds, but if they are caring for each other like that, why, it’s just the same as people, ain’t it?”

Freckles lifted his brave, steady eyes to the Boss.

“If anybody loved me like that, Mr. McLean, I wouldn’t be spending any time on how they looked or moved.  All I’d be thinking of would be how they felt toward me.  If they will stay, I’ll be caring as much for them as any chickens I have.  If I did laugh at them I thought he was just fine!”