“He’s a queer duck,” and Sam jerked his thumb back to show that he meant Si Lee; “sounds like a Chinese laundry.  I guess that’s the only thing he isn’t.  He can do any mortal thing but get on in life.  He’s been a soldier an’ a undertaker an’ a cook He plays a fiddle he made himself; it’s a rotten bad one, but it’s away ahead of his playing.  He stuffs birds—­that Owl in the parlour is his doin’; he tempers razors, kin doctor a horse or fix up a watch, an’ he does it in about the same way, too; bleeds a horse no matter what ails it, an’ takes another wheel out o’ the watch every times he cleans it.  He took Larry de Neuville’s old clock apart to clean once—­said he knew all about it—­an’ when he put it together again he had wheels enough left over for a new clock.

“He’s too smart an’ not smart enough.  There ain’t anything on earth he can’t do a little, an’ there ain’t a blessed thing that he can do right up first-class, but thank goodness sewing canvas is his long suit.  You see he was a sailor for three years—­longest time he ever kept a job, fur which he really ain’t to blame, since it was a whaler on a three-years’ cruise.”

VII

The Calm Evening

It was a calm June evening, the time of the second daily outburst of bird song, the day’s aftermath.  The singers seemed to be in unusual numbers as well.  Nearly every good perch had some little bird that seemed near bursting with joy and yet trying to avert that dire catastrophe.

As the boys went down the road by the outer fence of their own orchard a Hawk came sailing over, silencing as he came the singing within a given radius.  Many of the singers hid, but a Meadow Lark that had been whistling on a stake in the open was now vainly seeking shelter in the broad field.  The Hawk was speeding his way.  The Lark dodged and put on all power to reach the orchard, but the Hawk was after him now—­was gaining—­in another moment would, have clutched the terrified musician, but out of the Apple trees there dashed a small black-and-white bird—­the Kingbird.  With a loud harsh twitter—­his war-cry—­repeated again and again, with his little gray head-feathers raised to show the blood-and-flame-coloured undercrest—­his war colours—­he darted straight at the great robber.

“Clicker-a-clicker,” he fairly screamed, and made for the huge Hawk, ten times his size.

“Clicker-a-clicker!” he shrieked, like a cateran shouting the “slogan,” and down like a black-and-white dart—­to strike the Hawk fairly between the shoulders just as the Meadow Lark dropped in despair to the bare ground and hid its head from the approaching stroke of death.

“Clicker-a-clicker”—­and the Hawk wheeled in sudden consternation.  “Clicker-a-clicker”—­and the dauntless little warrior dropped between his wings, stabbing and tearing.

The Hawk bucked like a mustang, the Kingbird was thrown, but sprung on agile pinions above again.