y, so that it startled even me when I heard it. This seemed to
please my captor very much; so he put it inside one of the ticking
things on the shelf, and by-and-by a door opened and the wooden bird
jumped out and cried 'Cuck-oo! Cuck-oo! Cuck-oo!' and then jumped back
again and the door closed with a snap.

"'Bravo!' cried old white-hair; but I was rather annoyed, for I thought
the wooden bird was impudent in trying to ape the ways of live cuckoos.
I shouted back a challenge to it, but there was no reply. An hour
later, and every hour, it repeated the performance, but jumped behind
the door when I offered to fight it.

"The next day the man was absent from the room, and I had nothing to
eat. So I became angry and uneasy. I scratched away at the wooden bars
of my cage and tried to twist them with my beak, and at last one of
them, to my great joy, came loose, and I was able to squeeze myself out
of the cage.

"But then I was no better off than before, because the windows and the
door of the room were fast shut. I grew more cross and ill-tempered
than before, when I discovered this, and to add to my annoyance that
miserable wooden bird would every once in awhile jump out and yell
'Cuck-oo!' and then bounce back into its house again, without daring to
argue with me.

"This at last made me frantic with rage, and I resolved to be revenged.
The next time the wooden bird made its appearance I new upon it in a
flash and knocked it off the little platform before it had uttered its
cry more than twice. It fell upon the floor and broke one of its wings;
but in an instant I dashed myself upon it and bit and scratched the
impudent thing until there was not a bit of paint left upon it. Its
head came off, too, and so did its legs and the other wing, and before
I was done with it no one ever would have known it was once a clever
imitation of myself. Finding that I was victorious I cried 'Cuck-oo!'
in triumph, and just then the little door of the ticking thing opened
and the platform where the wooden bird had stood came out of it and
remained for a time motionless. I quickly flew up and perched upon it,
and shouted 'Cuck-oo!' again, in great glee. As I did so, to my
amazement the platform on which I stood leaped backward, carrying me
with it, and the next instant the door closed with a snap and I found
myself in darkness.

"Wildly I fluttered my wings; but it was of no use. I was in a prison
much worse than the cage, and so small