ed him, too, to see the supreme indifference with which the
all-conqueror's son treated his presence.

Jud grunted. He prided himself on his bird-lore. Finally he said:
"Wal, any fool could tell you--it's a wood-pecker's nest."

"Yes, that's so and jus' exacly what a fool 'ud say," came back from
the tree. "But it 'ud be because he is a fool, tho', an' don't see
things as they be. It's a fly-ketcher's nest, for all that--" he
added.

"Teach yo' gran'-mammy how to milk the house cat," sneered Jud, while
Bonaparte grew furious again with this added insult. "Don't you know
a wood-pecker's nest when you see it?"

"Yes," said Archie B., "an' I also know a fly-ketcher will whip a
wood-pecker and take his nes' from him, an' I've come up here to see
if it's so with this one."

"Oh," said Jud, surprised, "an' what is it?"

"Jus' as I said--he's whipped the wood-pecker an' tuck his nes'."

"What's a fly-ketcher, Mister Know-It-All?" said Jud. Then he grinned
derisively.

Bonaparte, watching his master, ran around the tree again and
squatting on his stump of a tail grinned likewise.

"A fly-ketcher," said Archie B. calmly, "is a sneaking sort of a
bird, that ketches flies an' little helpless insects for a--mill,
maybe. Do you know any two-legged fly-ketchers a-doin' that?"

Jud glared at him, and Bonaparte grew so angry that he snapped
viciously at the bark of the tree as if he would tear it down.

"What do you mean, you little imp?--what mill?"

"Why his stomach," drawled Archie B., "it's a little differunt from a
cotton-mill, but it grinds 'em to death all the same."

Jud looked up again. He glared at Archie B.

"How do you know that's a fly-ketcher's nest and not a wood-pecker's,
then?" he asked, to change the subject.

"That's what I'd like to know, too," said Bonaparte as plainly as his
growls and two mean eyes could say it.

"If it's a fly-ketcher's, the nest will be lined with a
snake's-skin," said Archie B. "That's nachrul, ain't it," he
added--"the nest of all sech is lined with snake-skins."

Bonaparte, one of whose chief amusements in life was killing snakes,
seemed to think this a personal thrust at himself, for he flew around
the tree with renewed rage while Archie B., safe on his high perch,
made faces at him and laughed.

"I'll bet it ain't that way," said Jud, rattled and discomfited and
shifting his long squirrel gun across his saddle. Archie B. replied
by carefully thrusting a brown sunburn