lawn, and almost immediately had a worm by the
tail. Worms object to being so treated, and this one protested
vigorously. Also, when pulled, they may come in halves. So Blackie
did not pull _too_ much. He jumped up, and, while he was in the air,
scraped the worm up with his left foot, or it may have been both feet.
The whole thing was done in the snap of a finger, however, almost too
quickly to be seen.

The worm, once up, was a dead one. Blackie seemed to kill it so
quickly as almost to hide the method used. In a few seconds more it
was a carved worm in three or four pieces--an unnice sight, but far
more amenable to reason that way.

Blackie was in rather long grass, and nerve-rackingly helpless, by the
same token. He could not see anything that was coming. Wherefore
every few seconds he had to stand erect and peer over the grass-tops.
It made no difference to the worm, however; it was carved just the same.

Blackie now hopped farther on in search of more worms, but found a big
piece of bread instead. It was really the hen-chaffinch who found the
bread, and he who commandeered it from her. Now he disclosed one fact,
and that was that bread would do for his children as well as worms.
Anyhow, he stuffed his beak about half up with bread, returned for the
pieces of worm, collected these, and retired up into the black cover of
a fir-tree.

No doubt he was expected to go right home with that load, then and
there. Even a cock-blackbird with young, however, must feed, and, if
one judged by the excess amount of energy--if that were possible--used
up, must feed more than usual. That seemed to be why he hid his whole
load in the crook of a big bough, and, returning to the lawn, ate
bread--he could wait to catch no worms for his own use, it appeared--as
fast as he could. Three false alarms sent him precipitantly into his
tree upon this occasion, and one real alarm--a passing boy--caused a
fourth retreat.

These operations were not performed in a moment, and by the time he got
back to his nest--mind, he had to contrive to approach it so that he
was seen by nobody, and his was a conspicuous livery, too--his children
appeared to be in the last stages of exhaustion. That, however, is
young birds all over; they expect their parents to be mere
feeding-machines, guaranteed to produce so many meals to the hour, and
hang the difficulties and the risks.

There was no sign of Blackie's wife. Presumably she was working