icacy of perseverance in his own case to
abandon the game here; so he went to work again, and with the aid of a
little lump of sugar returned to the lecture.

Had Star been a Chancery lawyer he could not have received the fee more
naturally, though, for the honour of the equity bar, I would hope
the similitude ends there, for he paid not the slightest heed to the
"instructions."

It would, perhaps, be rash in us "featherless bipeds" to condemn Star
all at once; there is no saying on what grounds he may have resisted
this educational attempt. How do we know that his reasoning ran not
somewhat in this strain?--

"What better off shall I be when I have learned all your hard words?--or
how is it that you, my teacher, knowing them so well, should be the
poor, half-fed, half-naked thing I see there before me?"

These very conjectures would seem to have crossed Fritz's mind, for he
said,--

"It is not for a mere whim that I would have thee learn this; these
words will bring us luck, Star! Ay, what I say is true, though thou
mayst shake thy head and think otherwise. I tell thee, 'Good words bring
luck.'"

Whether it was that Star assumed an air of more than ordinary conceit
and indifference, or that Fritz had come to the end of patience, I
cannot affirm; but he hastily added, and in a voice much louder and more
excited than was his wont,--"It is so; and thou shalt learn the words
whether thou wilt or no--that I tell thee!"

"Potztausend!" cried the bird, frightened by his excitement, and at once
recurring to his long unused exclamation: "Potztausend!"

"Hush, shameless thing!" said Fritz, angrily; "there is nothing for it
but punishment!" And so he replaced him in the cage, covered him close
on every side with his handkerchief, and trudged sorrowfully towards
home.

For several days Fritz never spoke to Starling, even one word. He
brought him his food in silence; and instead of taking him, as of old,
along with him into the fields, he hung his cage in a gloomy corner of
the hut, whence he could see little or nothing of what went on in the
house--no small privation for a bird so alive to inquisitiveness. At
length, when he believed punishment had gone far enough, he took him
down and hung him on his back as usual, and brought him a long, long way
into the hills. The day was fine, a fresh but balmy spring breathed over
the young flowers, and the little stream danced and rippled pleasantly;
and the clouds moved along o