good mud-puddle and built a bit more just
for the fun of it?

It was not very many days after this that Eve and Petro and all their
comrades ceased coming to the cliff where their curious nests were
fastened. Their doorways knew them no more; but over the meadows from
dawn till nearly dusk there flew beautiful old swallows bearing upon
their foreheads the pale mark of a new moon, and with them were their
young.

At night they sought the marshes, where their little feet might cling to
slender stems of bending reeds; and their numbers were very many.

But winter would be coming, and if it still was a long way off, so were
the hunting grounds of South America, where they must be flitting away
the days when the northern marshes would be frozen over.

So off they went, Eve and Petro and their young, looking so much like
others of the swallow flock that we could not tell who they were, now
that they had stopped coming to their nest with one open and one closed
doorway.

They would have far to travel, even if they took the direct over-water
route, which many sorts of birds do. But what is distance to Petro,
whose strong wings carry him lightly? A mile or a hundred or a thousand
even are nothing if the hunting be good. Might just as well be flying
south, as back and forth over the same meadow the livelong day, with now
and then a rest on the roadside wires, which fit his little feet nearly
as well as the reeds of the marsh. Some people think it is for the sake
of the hunting that the route of the swallows lies overland, for they
fly by day and catch their game all along the way.

And as they journeyed, Eve and Petro and their flock, south and south
and south, maybe the children, here and there, waved their hands to them
and called, "Good hunting, little friends of the air, and _good luck_
through all the winter till you come back to us again."

[Illustration: _A Famous Landmark._]

VI

UNCLE SAM

Uncle Sam stood at the threshold of his home, with an air of dignity.
There was enough to fill his breast with honest pride. His home had been
a famous landmark for generations before he himself had fallen heir to
it. It was the oldest one in the neighborhood. It had stood there
seventy-five years before, when a white man had built a cabin within
sight of it, for company. That cabin had been neglected and had fallen
to bits years ago; but Uncle Sam's ancestors had taken care of their
place, and had mended the weak