ed out of sight without so much as saying
"good-bye." Though I saw him several times after that, he never came
so close again.

"Oh, what heaps and heaps of fireflies!" exclaimed Betty, as she
unhooked my cage to move me into the house that evening. "It looks as
if our door-yard was full of moving lanterns."

"Nothin' but lightnen bugs!" said Joe contemptuously. "Here, see me
catch 'em," and in a few minutes he showed her a handful which he had
killed by crushing between his hands.

"Hold on, I want to catch some too!" and hustling me into the kitchen,
Betty ran along with him and was soon engaged in catching and killing
the beautiful fireflies.

CHAPTER IX

THE HUNTERS

Song birds, plumage birds, water fowl, and many innocent birds of prey,
are hunted from the everglades to the Arctic Circles for the barbaric
purpose of decorating women's hats. The extent of this traffic is
simply appalling.--_G. O. Shields._

When Joe and his father came back from their gunning expeditions, the
accounts they gave of the day's slaughter made me very homesick and
miserable, and wore sadly on my spirits in my captivity.

The heartless indifference with which the woman would ask her husband
if it had been "a good day for killings," almost made me wail aloud.

"Best kind of luck; I bagged nearly a hundred this trip," he replied
exultingly, one night when she put the usual question. "The birds were
as thick as blackberries in the high weeds along the creek, and were
havin' a mighty good time stuffing themselves with seeds. Joe fired
the old gun to start 'em and, great Jerushy! in a minute the sky was
dark with 'em; I just blazed away and they dropped thick all around us,
and it kept us tol'ble busy for a while a pickin' 'em up."

"Pop, tell 'em about the old water bird down in the swamp," said Joe
with a wicked laugh.

"Yes, tell us; what was it, pop?" urged Betty.

"Oh, nothin' partickler, I reckon; just an old bird that hadn't the
grit to get away from me," and the man gave a low chuckle at the
remembrance.

"My, oh! the way them old birds hung around and wouldn't scare worth a
cent when we was right up close to 'em was funny, I tell ye," and Joe
leaned back in his chair and slapped his knees in a fresh burst of
merriment.

"There was eggs in the nest was the cause," said the man; "them birds
are always as tame as kittens then. You can go right up to 'em and
they won't leave the nest. Them birds has two