g at the recollection.

"He hung head downwards by one leg, and wouldn't let go till father dug
his beak into him."

"Brutal," I murmured.

"Brutal! not a bit of it. You can't feed more than a certain number of
nestlings; besides which, there wouldn't be room in the nest. As it was, I
fell out before I could fly."

"What happened then?"

"Why, the old folks came and fed me, and helped me back again the shortest
way up the bark. Brutal, wasn't it? A martin wouldn't do that."

"Which reminds me," said I, "that you were not born in a martin's-nest.
Are trees the fashionable quarter just now?"

"They've come in more since thatched roofs went out," said the sparrow.
"It's tree or martins'-nests nowadays."

"You do really drive away the martins, I suppose?"

"Yes," he sniggered; "poor, dear little martins! Look here," said he, and
his voice changed from a snigger to vicious earnest. "We sparrows are just
about sick of being accused of bullying martins. White of Selborne started
it, but he didn't know what it would lead to. Would you like to know the
truth of the matter?"

It was one of the things I did want to hear, and I nodded assent.

"The disappearance of martins is a loss really of national importance," he
began, in a sickly whine. "It is a shame to see how the pretty house
martins are decreasing in this country at the hand of the sparrows," he
continued. "He drives away our migratory and pre-eminently useful
insect-eating birds, even turning out the eggs of the owners and using the
locality for its own nest."

He was obviously quoting from the pro-martin authorities, and I stopped
him.

"I have heard all that before," said I.

"There's a fair amount of it about, pages and pages," said he; "there's
one story, for instance, of twenty or thirty martins blocking up the bold,
bad sparrow inside the nest, which the said bold, bad sparrow had usurped.
What do you think of that?"

"I think it is untrue," I promptly replied.

"It _is_ untrue," said he; "but it isn't far away from truth, for all
that. Many a dead sparrow has been found in a martin's-nest, and many a
time the entrance was too small for a sparrow to have got out of; but,
still, it wouldn't take a healthy sparrow long to break up a
martin's-nest."

"What has happened then?" said I.

[Illustration: ONE PART OF WHITE ARSENIC TO FIFTEEN PARTS OF CORN-MEAL, IS
THE USUAL RECIPE.]

"Why, of course, the sparrow was dying when it got in. One part of