sitting and up in the air
and down at the water. Then she gave a frightful scream:

"Oh, poor forlorn widow that I am! What shall I do? What shall I do?"

He lay in the water, hit by a stray shot, dead, stiff.

[Illustration: 'HE LAY IN THE WATER, HIT BY A STRAY SHOT']

"Children! Children! Your father is dead!"

The four looked at her in dismay, when she brought the news; the fifth
stared vacantly and stupidly, as usual. The uproar continued, out in the
pond. The six reed-warblers sat in a row on the edge and were at their
wits' end what to do.

Then, gradually, it became quiet again.

The smoke of the powder lifted and the water calmed down. The men with
the guns sat up above in the wood and ate their lunch; and the woman of
the pond counted the money she had made.

"That was a terrible business," said the water-lily.

"My husband is dead," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler and sang a dirge that would
have moved a stone.

"My respectful condolences, madam," said the eel and came up out of the
mud. "But will you admit that I was right? Think how much care and
sorrow one escapes by keeping out of all this domesticity. I don't know
my wife, as I once had the honour of telling you; I have never seen her.
It wouldn't occur to me to shed a tear if anyone told me that she was
dead."

"You horrid, heartless person!" said Mrs. Reed-Warbler. "To talk like
that to a widow with five children, all unprovided for, and one of them
a cripple too!"

"Oh, those women!" said the eel and disappeared.

That evening, little Mrs. Reed-Warbler sat and thought things over.

"We must go," she said, "this very night. There's nothing else for us to
do. If we fly and hop as well as we can and work hard and behave
sensibly, we shall be all right."

"I can't keep up with you," said the crippled child.

"I was forgetting you," said Mrs. Reed-Warbler.

She looked at the poor child for a while. Then she shook her wings and
took a quick resolve:

"No, you can't keep up with us," she said. "And we can't stay here and
be ruined for your sake. If I leave you behind, you'll be eaten by a fox
or a cat or those greedy ants. It would be a pity for you to be
tortured, you poor little fellow. It's better that I should kill you
myself and have done with it."

Then and there, she rushed at the youngster and pecked away at his head
until he was dead:

"Now let's be off!" she said.

"Madam," said the eel, "you must not go without allowing me to say