place is beside her babies. Her heart beat quickly with a new terror,
but she stayed, the brave bird stayed! And all about her the other
herons stayed also. They had no way to fight for their lives, and they
might have flown far and safely on their strong wings; but none of them
would desert the home built with love while the frightened babies were
calling to their fathers and mothers.

No, _they_ could not fight for their lives, but there was one who could.
For danger did not come to Heron Camp without finding Ardea's Soldier at
his post.

Now the Plume-Hunters did not have bodies like crocodiles and leather
wings, you know; but they were dragons of a sort, for all that, for they
carried brutal things in their hands that belched forth smoke and pain
and death, and they were cruel of heart, and they had sold themselves to
do evil for the sake of the dollars that covetous men and women would
pay them for feathers.

Dragons though they were, Ardea's Soldier met them bravely. I like to
think how brave he was; for was not the fight he fought a fight for our
good old Mother Earth, that she might not lose those beautiful children
of hers? If the world should be robbed of Snowy Herons, it would be just
so much less lovely, just so much less wonderful. And have they no right
to life, since the same Power that gave life to men gave life to them?
And when we think about it this way, who seems to have the better right
to those plumes--herons, or men and women?

The Soldier believed in Ardea's right to life, believed in it so deeply
that he stood alone before the Plume-Hunters and told them that, while
he lived, the birds of his camp should also live.

And that is why they killed him--the dragons who were cruel of heart
and had sold themselves to do evil for the sake of dollars that covetous
men and women would pay for feathers.

Because of his courage and because of the cause for which he died, I
think, don't you, that Ardea's Soldier might well be called "Knight of
the Snowy Heron."

I said that he was alone, and it is true that no one was there at the
camp to help him. But many there were in other places doing their bit in
the same good fight. Another soldier, named Theodore Roosevelt, did much
for these birds when he was President, by granting them land where no
man had a right to touch them; for it makes a true soldier angry when
the weak are oppressed, and he said, "It is a disgrace to America that
we should permit