to be saved, it was time to be about it. The ranchman's son was
pruning the vineyard, and I rode over to get him to come and see how we
could rescue the little prisoners.

On our way to the tree we came on a gopher snake four feet long. It was
so near the color of the soil that I would have passed it by, but the
boy discovered it. The creature lay so still he thought it was dead; but
as we stood looking, it puffed itself up with a big breath, darted out
its tongue, and began to move off. I watched to see how it made the
straight track we so often saw in the dust of the roads. It bent its
neck into a scallop for a purchase, while its tapering tail made an S,
to furnish slack; and then it pulled the main length of its body along
straight. It crawled noiselessly right to the foot of the woodpecker
tree, but was only hunting for a hole to hide in. It got part way down
one hole, found that it was too small, and had to come backing out
again. It followed the sand bed, taking my regular beat, from tree to
tree! To be sure, gopher snakes are harmless, but they are suggestive,
and you would rather their ways were not your ways.

Although the little prisoners welcomed us as rescuers should be
welcomed, they did it by mistake. They thought we were their parents. At
the first blow of the axe their voices hushed, and not a sound came from
them again. It seemed as if we never should get the birds out.

It looked easy enough, but it wasn't. The nest was about twelve feet
above the ground. The sycamore was so big the boy could not reach around
it, and so smooth and slippery he could not get up it, though he had
always been a good climber. He clambered up a drooping branch on the
back of the tree,--the nest was in front,--but could not swing himself
around when he got up. Then he tried the hollow burned at the foot of
the tree. The charred wood crumbled beneath his feet, but at last, by
stretching up and clinging to a knothole, he managed to reach the nest.

As his fingers went down the hole, the young birds grabbed them,
probably mistaking them for their parents' bills. "Their throats seem
hot," the boy exclaimed; "poor hungry little things!" His fingers would
go through the nest hole, but not his knuckles, and the knothole where
he steadied himself was too slippery to stand on while he enlarged the
hole. It was getting late, and as he had his chores to do before dark I
suggested that we feed the birds and leave them in the tree till