The feelings of childhood never run for a long time in the same channel.  Very soon after entering his room, Andrew’s mind lost its sad impression, and began to search about for something to satisfy its restless activity.  First he got upon the chairs, and jumped from one to another.  This he continued until his feet passed through the slender cane-works of one of them.  Then he turned somersets on the bed, until more than a handful of feathers were beaten out and scattered about the room.  Next he climbed up the posts and balanced himself on the tester, to the no small risk of breaking that slender frame work, and injuring himself severely by a fall.  Soon the compass of the room became too narrow, and the elevation of the bed-posts too trifling for his expanding ideas.  He went to the window, and, opening it, looked forth.  Here was a new temptation.  The roof of a piazza, built out from a second story, came up to within a foot of the window-sill.  He had often ventured upon this roof, and he sprung out upon it again without a moment’s hesitation or reflection, and running along, with the lightness of a cat, gained the roof of the back building, which he ascended to the very apex, and then placed himself astride thereof.  Here he sat for some minutes looking around him and enjoying the prospect.  On the end of the back building was fastened a strong pole, running up into the air some ten feet.  On the top of this pole was a bird-box, in which a pair of pigeons had their nest.  Two young pigeons had been hatched out, and now nearly full-fledged and ready to fly, they were thrusting their glossy heads from the box, and looking about from their airy height.

A fluttering of wings, as the mother-bird returned with food for her young ones, attracted the attention of Andrew, and looking up, he saw the young pigeons.  Instantly came a desire to remove them from their nest.  But the way to that nest was too difficult and perilous for him to think of securing his wish.  This was the first impression.  Then he fixed his eye on the nest, and watched the old bird, as she sat on a ledge that projected from the box, while she distributed to her younglings the food she had brought.  Thus sat the boy at the moment his mother left the dining-room with the comfortable supper she had prepared for him, and there she would have found him in comparative safety, had she not been prevented from carrying out the kind promptings of her heart.

The longer Andrew gazed at the young birds, the more desirous did he become to get them in his possession.  Over and over again he measured the height and thickness of the pole with his eyes, calculating, all the while, his ability to climb it, and the amount of danger attendant on the adventure.