EVE AND PETRO 



the life that had been given them as surely as it had been 

 given to men, the years since 1820 had been happy ones 

 for the ancestors of Eve and Petro. 



Eve and Petro, themselves, were happy as any two 

 swallows need be that spring of 1920, when they started 

 forth to seek a cliff, just as their ancestors had done for 

 the hundred years or so since man began to notice their 

 habits, and no man knows for how many hundreds of 

 years before that. 



Of course they found it as all cliff swallows must, for 

 cliff -hunting is a part of their springtime work. It was 

 very high and very straight. Its wall was of boards, and 

 the gray shingled roof jutted out overhead just as if 

 inviting Eve and Petro to its shelter. 



It was a good cliff, and mankind had been so busy 

 building the same sort all across the country for the past 

 hundred years that there was no lack of them an3rwhere, 

 and swallows could now choose the ones that pleased 

 them best. Yes, civilization had been kind to them and 

 had made more cliffs than Nature had built for them; 

 though perhaps it was Mother Nature, herself, who 

 taught the birds that these structures men called barns 

 and used inside for hay or cattle were, after all, only 

 cliffs outside, and that people were harmless creatures 

 who would not hurt the swallow kind. 



However all that may be, it is quite certain that Eve 



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