erself down beside the whip,
there came a harsh call from behind her, where the lunch-pail stood. It
was the cowbird.

"Look-see! look-see!" he cried, pecking at the brown paper that held the
gingerbread. Jumping up, the little girl ran to him and caught him
tenderly to her breast.

He was so inquisitive that he soon became unpopular at the farm-house,
and on several occasions all but had his neck wrung for wrongdoing. One
day he picked the eldest brother's fiddle-strings in two; another time
he was discovered digging holes in the newly baked loaves of bread that
had been set in a window to cool; and, again, he stole hot potatoes out
of a kettle on the kitchen stove. But whenever danger threatened, the
little girl championed him valiantly. So time after time he escaped
merited punishment, which was to have been not less than death or exile;
for he was too small to whip.

But one morning in the early fall he was confronted with a very grave
charge--one that was, if proved true, to cost him his life or his home:
the little girl's mother, on going into the kitchen at sunrise to
prepare breakfast, discovered all her crocks of milk disturbed and the
shelf behind the stove, on which they stood in a long, yellow row,
spattered with milk from end to end. As she turned, very puzzled, from
the shelf to the table, she saw the cowbird gravely walking about on
the white oil-cloth.

"Look-see! look-see!" he cried to her, flirting his tail and blinking
his eyes. "Look-see! look-see!"

She ran to the table and seized him angrily in her hands, certain that
he had forsaken his own little pan of water to bathe in the milk. But
when she had looked him over carefully, and found him dry and tidy from
top to toe, she let him go again, forgetting to feel of the white
oil-cloth upon which he had been promenading, and which was spattered
with milk like the shelf.

Before the contents of the crocks were thrown out that morning, the
little girl's mother called all of the big brothers in to view the mess;
and by the time breakfast was over, the cowbird had been passed around,
for every one wanted to see if any milk could be found on him. None was
discovered, however, so the little girl was allowed to carry him away in
triumph on her shoulder.

For two or three mornings after that the milk was not visited by the
marauder. Then for several days in succession it was splashed about on
shelf, stove, and floor, and the little girl's mother was m