few faint notes in imitation--just a few. Then he halted.

'Not so bad for a beginning!' delightedly murmured Jerry, under his
breath.

Bully, on his part, rather seemed to like the sound of his own voice.
With a vain perk and a flutter, he tried again, his note more assured.
Lo! there was a duet. A neighbour finch had joined in; another bully
was won over, and Jerry chuckled softly. Old Pierre had been perfectly
correct, then! The thing was possible. It was Jerry's own first
attempt, and he had been careful to follow out the Frenchman's
directions, though, until he heard with his own ears the result, he had
been secretly somewhat sceptical.

In a few moments more there was a feeble chorus piping in unison with
the tiny bird-organ which Jerry continued to softly play. The other
finches had summoned up courage to join their brethren.

As an instantaneous reward the teacher let a flood of light into the
dark room, in accordance with Pierre's code. More, he proceeded to
give his hungry pupils a little--only a little--food, enough, in fact,
to make them ravenous for more. Then he plunged the little room in
sudden darkness again by shutting out the light. Thus Jerry gradually
educated the birds into connecting the idea of food and light with the
sound of his little instrument's melody.

After two or three repetitions of this performance, it followed that
the finches, kept on short commons, no sooner heard the notes of the
bird-organ always playing the one unvarying tune, than they, too,
attempted to sing it, in the sheer hope of being fed, and of seeing the
hated darkness disappear. Jerry being ever careful not to disappoint
their expectations, the result came to pass that the particular melody
was committed to memory--the tune was learned, more or less correctly;
for the feathered pupils were like human scholars, in that the few, not
the many, arrive at perfection.

After this reward for his enormous patience, Jerry Blunt's next move
was to board out his pupils in the village with trustworthy boys who
were selected for the posts of pupil-teachers. One boy was appointed
to each bird, in order to carry out the business of teaching _the_ tune
by whistling it incessantly until the air was firmly fixed in those
tiny memories, which, if they had not been exactly 'wax to receive,'
proved 'marble to retain.' As the finches grew perfect in their one
life-lesson, the Scottish ditty resounded sweetly all over the vil