“Oh, nothin’ partickler, I reckon; just an old bird that hadn’t the grit to get away from me,” and the man gave a low chuckle at the remembrance.

“My, oh! the way them old birds hung around and wouldn’t scare worth a cent when we was right up close to ’em was funny, I tell ye,” and Joe leaned back in his chair and slapped his knees in a fresh burst of merriment.

“There was eggs in the nest was the cause,” said the man; “them birds are always as tame as kittens then.  You can go right up to ’em and they won’t leave the nest.  Them birds has two broods in a season, and then’s the chance to get a good whack at ’em.”

Joe rubbed his hands together in delight as he turned to his sister, “You’d ought to have seen ’em, Betty.  There was pop in his rubber boots a creepin’ along—­a c-r-e-e-p-i-n’ along as sly as a mouse toward ‘em, and there they stayed.  The male bird he fluttered and’ squawked, and the female she stuck to the nest till pop he got right up and he didn’t even have to shoot her.  He just clubbed her over the back and down she went ker-splash as dead as you please.  Them there eggs won’t hardly hatch out this year, I don’t reckon,” and at the prospect Joe broke into a malicious guffaw.

“I think to club it was meaner’n to shoot the poor thing,” said Betty indignantly.  “And, anyway, I wouldn’t a-killed it on the nest.  It’s mean to treat an ’fectionate bird so.”

“Pshaw, you’d do big things!” was Joe’s scornful reply.

“Well, I wouldn’t be so tremenj’us cruel,” persisted Betty; “I don’t believe in killing a pretty bird.”

“But what would the wimmen do without bunnet trimmen’ if we didn’t kill ’em, hey?” and Joe finished his question with a taunting whistle.

As the shadows of each evening gathered around the cottage, the shadow over my life seemed to deepen and grow more gloomy.  Outside the door I could hear the hum of the bees as they flew homeward, the wind-harp played in the yellow pines its softest, sweetest music, and I scented the odor of honeysuckles and roses far away.  The rushing of the waters over the stones in the creek tinkled dreamily, but in the midst of all earth’s loveliness I was desolate, because I was not free.

And thus the summer days dragged wearily along, and the autumn came.  It is not surprising then that I was overjoyed when later on I learned that I was to be given as a present to a young relative of Betty’s, who lived to the northward in a distant State.  My present existence had grown almost intolerable, and I felt that any change could scarcely make my condition worse, and there was a chance of its being better.  The prospect put new life into me.

Preening my feathers became a pleasant task once more.  I whetted my bill till it glistened, and my long-neglected toilet again became my daily care.

“I shall be mighty glad to get rid of the mopy creature,” Betty’s mother had, said when they talked of my departure.  “I wouldn’t give the thing house-room for my part.”