t is
that no _child_ who reads this story is in any way to blame because the
dove is lost. What boy or girl is not glad to think, when some wrong has
been done or some mistake has been made, "It's not _my_ fault"?

[Illustration: _Once, so many flew by, that the sound of their wings was
like the sound of thunder._]

Even though this bird is gone forever and forever and forever, there are
many other kinds living among us. If old Mother Earth has been robbed of
some of her children, she still has many more--many wonderful and
beautiful living things. And that she may keep them safe, she needs your
help; for boys and girls are her children, too, and the power lies in
your strong hands and your courageous hearts and your wise brains to
help save some of the most wonderful and fairest of other living things.
And what one among you all, I wonder, will not be glad to think that
_you_ help keep the world beautiful, when you leave the water-lilies
floating on the pond; that it is the same as if _you_ sow the seeds in
wild gardens, when you leave the cardinal flowers glowing on the banks
and the fringed gentians lending their blue to the marshes. For the life
of the world, whether it flies through the air or grows in the ground,
is greatly in your care; and though you may never win a prize of money
for finding the dove that other people lost, there is a reward of joy
ready for anyone who can look at our good old Mother Earth and say, "It
will not be _my_ fault if, as the years go by, you lose your birds and
flowers."

And it would be, don't you think, one of the greatest of adventures to
seek and find and help keep safe such of these as are in danger, that
they may not, like the dove, be lost?

XI

LITTLE SOLOMON OTUS

Oh, the wise, wise look of him, with his big round eyes and his very
Roman nose! He had sat in a golden silence throughout that dazzling day;
but when the kindly moon sent forth a gentler gleam, he spoke, and the
speech of little Solomon Otus was as silver. A quivering, quavering
whistle thrilled through the night, and all who heard the beginning
listened to the end of his song.

It was a night and a place for music. The mellow light lay softly over
the orchard tree, on an old branch of which little Solomon sat mooning
himself before his door. He could see, not far away, the giant chestnut
trees that shaded the banks of a little ravine; and hear the murmuring
sound of Shanty Creek, where Nata[3] gr