some day after I have
gone in," snapped Barney, darting off the perch to catch a fly, and
grasping the wire so violently on his return, that the other birds
fluttered and almost lost their footing. "What is all this trouble
about?" asked the Martin in his soft rich voice. "I live ten miles
further up country, and only pass here twice a year, so that I do not
know the latest news. Why must you leave the farm? It seems to be a
charming place for Bird People. I see a little box under the barn eaves
that would make me a fine house."

"It _is_ a delightful place for us," replied the Barn Swallow; "but now
the House People who own the farm are coming back to live here
themselves, and everything is turned topsy-turvy. They should have asked
us if we were willing for them to come. Bird People are of a _much_
older race than House People anyway; it says so in their books, for I
heard Rap, the lame boy down by the mill, reading about it one day when
he was sitting by the river."

All the other birds laughed merrily at this, and the Martin said, "Don't
be greedy, Brother Barney; those people are quite welcome to their barns
and houses, if they will only let us build in their trees. Bird People
own the whole sky and some of our race dive in the sea and swim in the
rivers where no House People can follow us."

"You may say what you please," chattered poor unhappy Barney,
"everything is awry. The Wrens always built behind the window-blinds,
and now these blinds are flung wide open. The Song Sparrow nested in the
long grass under the lilac bushes, but now it is all cut short; and they
have trimmed away the nice mossy branches in the orchard where hundreds
of the brothers built. Besides this, the Bluebird made his nest in a
hole in the top of the old gate post, and what have those people done
but put up a new post with _no hole in it_!"

"Dear! dear! Think of it, _think_ of it!" sang the Bluebird softly,
taking his place on the wire with the others.

"What if these people should bring children with them," continued
Barney, who had not finished airing his grievances--"little BOYS and
CATS! Children who might climb up to our nests and steal our eggs, boys
with _guns_ perhaps, and striped cats which no one can see, with feet
that make no sound, and _such_ claws and teeth--it makes me shiver to
think of it." And all the birds shook so that the wire quivered and the
Bank Swallow fell off, or would have fallen, if he had not spread his