ronger on their feet. They no
longer had to go around an acorn; they could even scramble over
pine-cones, and on the little tags that marked the places for their
wings, were now to be seen blue rows of fat blood-quills.

Their start in life was a good mother, good legs, a few reliable
instincts, and a germ of reason. It was instinct, that is, inherited
habit, which taught them to hide at the word from their mother; it was
instinct that taught them to follow her, but it was reason which made
them keep under the shadow of her tail when the sun was smiting down,
and from that day reason entered more and more into their expanding
lives.

Next day the blood-quills had sprouted the tips of feathers. On the
next, the feathers were well out, and a week later the whole family of
down-clad babies were strong on the wing.

And yet not all--poor little Runtie had been sickly from the first. He
bore his half-shell on his back for hours after he came out; he ran less
and cheeped more than his brothers, and when one evening at the onset of
a skunk the mother gave the word '_Kwit, kwit_' (Fly, fly), Runtie was
left behind, and when she gathered her brood on the piney hill he was
missing, and they saw him no more.

Meanwhile, their training had gone on. They knew that the finest
grasshoppers abounded in the long grass by the brook; they knew that the
currant-bushes dropped fatness in the form of smooth, green worms; they
knew that the dome of an ant-hill rising against the distant woods stood
for a garner of plenty; they knew that strawberries, though not really
insects, were almost as delicious; they knew that the huge danaid
butterflies were good, safe game, if they could only catch them, and
that a slab of bark dropping from the side of a rotten log was sure to
abound in good things of many different kinds; and they had learned,
also, the yellow-jackets, mud-wasps, woolly worms, and hundred-leggers
were better let alone.

It was now July, the Moon of Berries. The chicks had grown and
flourished amazingly during this last month, and were now so large that
in her efforts to cover them the mother was kept standing all night.

They took their daily dust-bath, but of late had changed to another
higher on the hill. It was one in use by many different birds, and at
first the mother disliked the idea of such a second-hand bath. But the
dust was of such a fine, agreeable quality, and the children led the way
with such enthusiasm, that