clod whistled prettily as it felt the growing
sunshine.

Yan strained his eyes and attention to take it in. He crept up near
it. It took wing, and as it went he threw after it a short stick he
was carrying. The stick whirled over and struck the bird. It fell
fluttering. Yan rushed wildly after it and caught it in spite of his
mother's calling him back.

He came with the bird in his hand, but it did not live many minutes.
His mother was grieved and disgusted. She said. "So this is the great
love you have for the wild things; the very first spring bird to sing
you must club to death. I do not understand your affections. Are not
two sparrows sold for one farthing, and yet not one of them falls to
the ground without the knowledge of your heavenly Father."

Yan was crushed. He held the dead bird in his hand and said,
contradictorily, as the tears stood in his eyes, "I wish I hadn't; but
oh, it was so beautiful."

He could not explain, because he did not understand, and yet was no
hypocrite.

Weeks later a cheap trip gave him the chance for the first time in his
life to see Niagara. As he stood with his mother watching the racing
flood, in the gorge below the cataract, he noticed straws, bubbles and
froth, that seemed to be actually moving upstream. He said:

"Mother, you see the froth how it seems to go up-stream."

"Well!"

"Yet we know it is a trifle and means nothing. We know that just below
the froth is the deep, wide, terrible, irresistible, arrowy flood,
surging all the other way."

"Yes, my son."

"Well, Mother, when I killed the Shore-lark, that was froth going the
wrong way, I did love the little bird. I know now why I killed it.
Because it was going away from me. If I could have seen it near and
could have touched it, or even have heard it every day, I should never
have wished to harm it. I didn't mean _to kill it_, only _to
get it_. You gather flowers because you love to keep them near you,
not because you want to destroy them. They die and you are sorry. I
only tried to gather the Shore-lark as you would a flower. It died,
and I was very, very sorry."

"Nevertheless," the mother replied, "the merciful man is merciful unto
his beast. He who hearkens when the young Ravens cry, surely took note
of it, and in His great Book of Remembrance it is written down against
you."

And from that time they surely drifted apart.

PART II

SANGER & SAM

I

The New Home

Yan was now fou