bunt the wall of
their clay nest smooth on the inside with the top of their closed beaks,
not stopping even though they brushed their pretty chestnut-colored
cheeks against the sticky mud, or got specks on the feathers of their
dainty foreheads that bore a mark shaped like a pale new moon. And she
had hoped to climb the ladder many a time again, and watch Eve and Petro
feed their children when the nest was done and lined and the eggs were
laid and hatched; for this nest could be looked into, as the top was
left open because the barn roof sheltered it and it needed no other
cover.

Now Eve and Petro were gone, and no more sketches could be made near
enough to show how little cliff swallows looked in their nest. And
nothing more could be written about such affairs of these two birds as
could only be learned close to them. Nor, indeed, was there any way to
learn those things from the rest of the colony; for it so chanced that
Eve and Petro were the only pair who had built where a ladder could be
placed. So bad luck had come not only to Eve and Petro, but to the story
of their lives.

But, most of all, the breaking of their nest brought bad luck to That
Boy, himself. For as he stood at the top of the ladder, he might have
curved the hollow of his hand gently upon the rounded outside of the
nest and, waiting quietly, have watched the building birds. He might
have seen Eve come flitting home with her tiny load of clay, poking it
out of her mouth with her tongue and bunting it smooth in her own
cunning way. He might have laid his head against the ladder and heard
their cosy voices as they squeaked pleasantly together over the
home-building. He might have looked at the colors of their feathers, and
seen where they were glossy black with a greenish sheen, where rich
purply chestnut, and where grayish white. He might have looked well at
the pale feather moon on their foreheads, which the man named Say had
noticed one hundred years before. He might, oh, he might have become one
of the brotherhood of men, whom swallows of one kind or another have
trusted since the far-off years of Bible times when they built at the
altars of the Lord of Hosts.

All this good luck he held, That Boy, in the hollow of his hand, and he
threw it away when he struck the nest; and it fell, crumbled, with the
broken bits of clay.

[Illustration: _Quaint Clay Pottery._]

As for Eve and Petro, if fear and disappointment had driven trust from
their hea