they had swallowed ipecac.

[Illustration]

I never saw the inside of that home. At the moment I was in too much of
a hurry to get down and wash in the lake; and after that, so large were
the young birds, so keen and powerful the beaks, that no man or beast
might expect to look over the edge of the nest, with hands or paws
engaged in holding on, and keep his eyes for a single instant. It is
more dangerous to climb for young herons than for young eagles. A heron
always strikes for the eye, and his blow means blindness or death,
unless you watch like a cat and ward it off.

When I saw the young again they were taking their first lessons. A
dismal croaking in the tree-tops attracted me, and I came over
cautiously to see what my herons were doing. The young were standing up
on the big nest, stretching necks and wings, and croaking hungrily;
while the mother stood on a tree-top some distance away, showing them
food and telling them plainly, in heron language, to come and get it.
They tried it after much coaxing and croaking; but their long, awkward
toes missed their hold upon the slender branch on which she was
balancing delicately--just as she expected it to happen. As they fell,
flapping lustily, she shot down ahead of them and led them in a long,
curving slant to an open spot on the shore. There she fed them with the
morsels she held in her beak; brought more food from a tuft of grass
where she had hidden it, near at hand; praised them with gurgling croaks
till they felt some confidence on their awkward legs; then the whole
family started up the shore on their first frogging expedition.

It was intensely interesting for a man who, as a small boy, had often
gone a-frogging himself--to catch big ones for a woodsy corn roast, or
little ones for pickerel bait--to sit now on a bog and watch the little
herons try their luck. Mother Quoskh went ahead cautiously, searching
the lily pads; the young trailed behind her awkwardly, lifting their
feet like a Shanghai rooster and setting them down with a splash to
scare every frog within hearing, exactly where the mother's foot had
rested a moment before. So they went on, the mother's head swinging like
a weather-vane to look far ahead, the little ones stretching their necks
so as to peek by her on either side, full of wonder at the new world,
full of hunger for things that grew there, till a startled young frog
said _K'tung!_ from behind a lily bud, where they did not see him, and