enjoyed doing many of the same things the children did. It was that,
and his sociable, merry ways, that made him such a good playfellow, and
because he wanted them to be happy in his pleasure and to praise his
clever tricks. Like other children, eating when he was hungry gave him
joy, and at times he made a game of it that was fun for them all. Every
now and then he would go off quietly by himself, and fill the hollow of
his throat with berries from the bushes near the river-bank and, flying
back to his friends, would spill out his fruit, uncrushed, in a little
pile beside them while he crooned and chuckled about it. He seemed to
have the same sort of good time picking berries in his throat cup and
showing how many he had found that the children did in seeing which
could first fill a tin cup before they sat down on the rocks to eat
them.

One day the Brown-eyed Boy and the Blue-eyed Girl were down by the
river, hunting for pearls. A pearl-hunter had shown them how to open
freshwater clamshells without killing the clams. Suddenly Corbie walked
up and, taking one of these hard-shelled animals right out of their
hands, he flew high overhead and dropped it down on the rocks near by.
Of course that broke the shell and of course Corbie came down and ate
the clam, without needing any vinegar or butter on it to make it taste
good to him. How he learned to do this, the children never knew. Perhaps
he found out by just happening to drop one he was carrying, or perhaps
he saw the wild crows drop their clams to break the shells: for after
nesting season they used often to come down from the mountainside to
fish by the river for snails and clams and crayfish, when they were not
helping the farmers by eating up insects in the fields.

Corbie liked the crayfish, too, as well as people like lobsters and
crabs, and he had many an exciting hunt, poking under the stones for
them and pulling them out with his strong beak.

There seemed to be no end of things Corbie could do with that beak of
his. Sometimes it was a little crowbar for lifting stones or bits of
wood when he wanted to see what was underneath; for as every outdoor
child, either crow or human, knows, very, very interesting things live
in such places. Sometimes it was a spade for digging in the dirt.
Sometimes it was a pick for loosening up old wood in the hollow tree
where he kept his best treasures. Sometimes it worked like a
nut-cracker, sometimes like a pair of forceps, a