The bluejay was entirely occupied with his own business of breaking into another bird’s nest and eating the eggs.  He scolded violently between mouthfuls; he had finished three eggs and begun on the fourth and last when we came upon the scene.  He had no fear of us; he had seen us before, and he knew very well indeed that the red-bearded creature with the cane was a particular and peculiar friend of feathered folks.  So he cocked a knowing head, with a cruel beak full of egg, and flirted a splendid tail at his friend; then swallowed the last morsel and rowed viciously with Laurence and me; for the bluejay is wholly addicted to billingsgate.  He paid no attention to the distraught mother-bird, fluttering and crying on a limb nearby.

“Gosh, pal, I’ve sure had some meal!” said the bluejay to John Flint.  “Chase that skirt, over there, please—­she makes too much noise to suit me!”

But for once John Flint wasn’t a friend to a bluejay—­he uttered an exclamation of sorrow and dismay.

“My nest!” he cried tragically.  “My beautiful nest with the four eggs, that I’ve been watching day by day!  And the little mother-thing that knew me, and let me touch her, and feed her, and wasn’t afraid of me!  Oh, you blue devil!  You thief!  You murderer!” And in a great gust of sorrow and anger he lifted his stick to hurl it at the criminal.  Laurence caught the upraised arm.

“But he doesn’t know he’s a thief and a murderer,” said he, and looked at the handsome culprit with unwilling admiration.  The jay, having finished the nest to his entire satisfaction, hopped down upon a limb and turned his attention to us.  He screamed at Laurence, thrusting forward his impudent head; while the poor robbed mother, with lamentable cries, watched him from a safe distance.  Full of his cannibal meal, Mister Bluejay callously ignored her.  He was more interested in us.  Down he came, nearer yet, with a flirt of fine wings, a spreading of barred tail, just above Flint’s head, and talked jocularly to his friend in jayese.

“You’re a thief and a robber!” raged the Butterfly Man.  “You’re a damn little bird-killer, that’s what you are!  I ought to wring your neck for you, and I’d do it if it would do the rest of your tribe any good.  But it wouldn’t.  It wouldn’t bring back the lost eggs nor the spoiled nest, either.  Besides, you don’t know any better.  You’re what you are because you were hatched like that, and there wasn’t Anything to tell you what’s right and wrong for a decent bird to do.  The best one can do for you is to get wise to your ways and watch out that you can’t do more mischief.”

The bluejay, with his handsome crested head on one side, cocked his bright black eye knowingly, and passed derisive remarks.  Any one who has listened attentively to a bluejay must be deeply grateful that the gift of articulate speech has been wisely withheld from him; he is a hooligan of a bird.  He lifted his wings like half-playful fists.  If he had fingers, be sure a thumb had been lifted profanely to his nose.