eform bluejays--it's to save the other birds
from them."

John Flint's face was troubled. "It's all a muddle, anyhow," said he.
"You can't blame the bluejay, because he was born so, and it's
bluejay nature to act like that when it gets the chance. But there's
the other bird--it looks bad. It is bad. For a thief to come into a
little nest like that, that she'd been brooding on, and twittering to,
and feeling so good and so happy about--Man, I'd have given a month's
work and pay to have saved that nest! It's not fair. God! Isn't there
_some_ way to save the good ones from the bad ones?"

There he stood, in the middle of the path, staring ruefully at the
wrecked bit of twigs and moss and down that had been a wee home; and
with more of sorrow than anger at the feathered crook who had done the
damage. The thing was slight in itself, and more than common--just one
of the unrecorded humble tragedies which daily engulf the Little
Peoples. But I had seen a butterfly's wing save him alive; and so I
did not doubt now that a little bird's nest could weigh down the
balance which would put him definitely upon the side of good and of
God.

"I think there is a way," said Laurence, gravely, "and that is to beat
them to it and stand them off. All the rest is talk and piffle--the
only way to save is to save. There are no halfway measures; also, it's
a lifetime job, full of kicks and cuffs and ingratitude and
misunderstanding and failure and loneliness, and sometimes even worse
things yet. But you do manage to sometimes save the nests and the
fledglings, and you do sometimes escape the pain of hearing the
mothers lamenting. And that's the only reward a decent mortal ought to
hope for. I reckon it's about the best reward there is, this side of
heaven."

The Butterfly Man swallowed this a bit ungraciously.

"You've got a devil of a way of twisting things into parables. I'm
talking birds and thinking birds, and here you must go and make my
birds people! I wasn't thinking about people--that is, I wasn't, until
you have to go and put the notion into my head. It's not fair. The
thing's bad enough already, without your lugging folks into it and
making it worse!"

Laurence looked at him steadily. "You've got to think of people, when
you see things like that," said he, slowly; "otherwise you only
half-see. I have to think of people--of kids, particularly--and their
mothers." He turned as he spoke, and stared out over our garden, with
its s