Apparently he had sought it to good effect. Two weeks before he had been 

 carried into the hotel, too weak to walk, and today he was willing to under- 

 take a tramp of ten miles over the hills. Some one told us of a sugar bush 

 that was to be found in the back country. This information was an added in- 

 ducement to the doctor who confessed a weakness for maple sap. 



Before we struck out for the higher hills we came across a group of men 

 and boys at the edge of a pond. A mud hen, which had dropped in during the 

 night for food and rest, was paddling about the water, and acting as a target 

 for the revolvers of half a dozen of the men. The bullets spattered on the 

 surface all about the bird, but it lacked the wisdom to take flight. It swam 

 about in a circle in a half -bewildered way and simply invited death. I asked 

 the men to stop shooting, but I speedily found that humanitarian pleas are of 

 little avail when addressed to a man with a gun. I threw a stone the size of 

 my fist in the direction of the bird, hoping that the splash would frighten it to 

 flight, but the stone had no more effect than the shots. We left the men still 

 popping away, and that evening on our return I heard a big fellow boasting 

 to the group gathered round the open fire in the hotel office that he had killed 

 the bird at the fifteenth shot. Mud hens are notoriously stupid, and they pay 

 the penalty of their stupidity every time a pot-hunter gets into one of their 

 retreats. 



I saw my first bluebird of the year that morning in the Hoosier hills. The 

 bluebirds must have wonderful recruiting powers; it was only seven years be- 

 fore that their ranks were so thinned by the attacks of the cold that it was 

 thought the muster roll never again would be full. This spring of 1901 was 

 the first time that I had seen anything like a satisfying number of these sweet- 

 voiced birds since they fell victims to that wintry blast which penetrated far 

 into the southland. It is said now that there are more bluebirds than ever, 

 but this saying is doubtless due to faulty memories on the part of the observ- 

 ers. One bluebird that we came across was gravely inspecting the carcass of a 

 crow which some one had hung on the thorns of an Osage orange hedge. The 

 crow had been killed and put there as a lesson to his marauding brothers, but 

 I couldn't believe that the lesson had sunk very deep into the crow mind, for 

 on a tree less than fifty yards from the body of the deceased, three crows were 

 sitting and sunning themselves unconcernedly. 



Before the morning was spent I had found out why it is that heavy wind- 

 storms fail to break the eggs in birds' nests that are hung on frail branches 

 which sway and snap with every blast. The roads were in such condition that 

 they were impassable for wagons, and many people passed us on horseback. 

 If memory serves, every one of the horsemen carried a basket of eggs slung 

 over his right arm. The horses floundered through mud holes, and made their 

 stumbling ways up and down hills where the roadway was covered with stumps 

 and stones washed out from the embankments by the heavy rain. The rider 

 in every instance made the basket with its precious burden conform to the sway- 



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