BIRD STORIES 



and crumbled, too. In dismay they cried out when they 

 saw what was happening, and in dismay their swallow 

 comrades cried out with them. Fear and disappoint- 

 ment entered their quick hearts, which had been beat- 

 ing in confidence and hope. People who climbed lad- 

 ders were not beings to trust, after all, but frightful and 

 destroying creatures. This had the hand of That Boy 

 brought to Eve and Petro, who looked at the empty 

 place where their nest had been, and went away. 



Bad luck it brought to an artist who drew pictures of 

 birds; and when he knew what had happened, a sudden 

 light flamed in his eyes. The name of this light is anger 

 — the kind that comes when harm has been ruthlessly 

 done to the weak and helpless. For the artist had 

 climbed the ladder many a time, and had laid his quiet 

 hand upon the lower curve of the nest while Eve and 

 Petro went on with their building at the upper edge. 

 And he had seen the colors of their feathers and the 

 shape of the pale crescent on their foreheads — the mark 

 a man named Say had noticed many years before, when 

 he named this swallow in Latin, lunifrons, because luna 

 means moon smdfrons means front. And he had hoped 

 to climb the ladder many a time again, and when there 

 should be young in the nest, to see how they looked and 

 watch what they did, so that he could draw pictures of 

 the chil(Jren of Eve and Petro. 



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