same handsome reddish-brown, while underneath he was
whitish with little bars of black. His throat was white, and above each
eye was a broad white stripe. His white throat was bordered with black,
and a band of black divided the throat from the white line above each
eye. The top of his head was mixed black and brown. Altogether he was a
handsome little fellow in a modest way.

Suddenly Bob White stopped whistling and looked down at Peter with a
twinkle in his eye. "Why don't you go hunt for that nest, Peter?" said
he.

"I'm going," replied Peter rather shortly, for he knew that Bob knew
that he hadn't the least idea where to look. It might be somewhere on
the Green Meadows or it might be in the Old Pasture; Bob hadn't given
the least hint. Peter had a feeling that the nest wasn't far away and
that it was on the Green Meadows, so he began to hunt, running aimlessly
this way and that way, all the time feeling very foolish, for of course
he knew that Bob White was watching him and chuckling down inside.

It was very warm down there on the Green Meadows, and Peter grew hot and
tired. He decided to run up in the Old Pasture in the shade of an old
bramble-tangle there. Just the other side of the fence was a path made
by the cows and often used by Farmer Brown's boy and Reddy Fox and
others who visited the Old Pasture. Along this Peter scampered,
lipperty-lipperty-lip, on his way to the bramble-tangle. He didn't look
either to right or left. It didn't occur to him that there would be any
use at all, for of course no one would build a nest near a path where
people passed to and fro every day.

And so it was that in his happy-go-lucky way Peter scampered right past
a clump of tall weeds close beside the path without the least suspicion
that cleverly hidden in it was the very thing he was looking for. With
laughter in her eyes, shrewd little Mrs. Bob White, with sixteen white
eggs under her, watched him pass. She had chosen that very place for her
nest because she knew that it was the last place anyone would expect to
find it. The very fact that it seemed the most dangerous place she could
have chosen made it the safest.

CHAPTER XV. A Swallow and One Who Isn't.

Johnny and Polly Chuck had made their home between the roots of an old
apple-tree in the far corner of the Old Orchard. You know they have
their bedroom way down in the ground, and it is reached by a long hall.
They had dug their home between the roots of that