“Now, sonny,” said Sam, as it disappeared, “don’t tell your folks what happened you or they’ll swat you for a liar.”

“Oh, shucks!  That’s no adventure.  Why, I—­”

“Hold on, Hawkeye; Little Beaver next.”

“Well, I don’t care.  I bet I—­”

Sam grabbed his knife and interrupted:  “Do you know what Callahan’s spring lamb did when it saw the old man gathering mint?  Go ahead, Little Beaver.”

“I hadn’t much of an adventure, but I went straight through the woods where my straw pointed and ran into a big dead stub.  It was too old and rotten for Birds to use now, as well as too late in the season, so I got a pole and pushed it over, and I found the whole history of a tenement in that stub.  First of all, a Flicker had come years ago and dug put a fine big nesting-place, and used it maybe two or three times.  When he was through, or maybe between seasons, the Chickadees made a winter den of it, for there were some Chickadee tail-feathers in the bottom.  Next a Purple Blackbird came and used the hole, piling up a lot of roots with mud on them.  Next year it seems it came again and made another nest on top of the last; then that winter the Chickadees again used it for a cubby-hole, for there were some more Chickadee feathers.  Next year a Blue Jay found it out and nested there.  I found some of her egg-shells among the soft stuff of the nest.  Then I suppose a year after a pair of Sparrow-hawks happened on the place, found it suited them, and made their nest in it and hatched a brood of little Sparrow-hawks.  Well, one day this bold robber brought home to his little ones a Shrew.”

“What’s that?”

“Oh, a little thing like a Mouse, only it isn’t a Mouse at all; it is second cousin to a Mole.”

“I allus thought a Mole was a Mouse specie,” remarked Hawkeye, not satisfied with Yan’s distinction.

“Oh, you!” interrupted Sam.  “You’ll try to make out the Burnses is some kin to the Raftens next.”

“I bet I won’t!” and for once Guy got even.

“Well,” Yan continued, “it so happened—­about the first time in about a million years—­the little Hawks were not hungry just then.  The Shrew wasn’t gobbled up at once, and though wounded, it set to work to escape as soon as it was free of the old one’s claws.  First it hid under the little ones, then it began to burrow down through the feather-bed of the Sparrow-hawk’s nest, then through the Blue Jay’s nest, then through the soft stuff of the Blackbird’s nest and among the old truck left by the Chickadees till it struck the hard mud floor of the Blackbird’s nest, and through that it could not dig.  Its strength gave out now, and it died there and lay hidden in the lowest nest of the house, till years after I came by and broke open the old stub and made it tell me a sad and mournful story—­that—­maybe—­never happened at all.  But there’s the drawing I made of it at the place, showing all the nests just as I found them, and there’s the dried up body of the little Shrew.”