218 BEAUTIFUL BIRDS 
slowly, through the air, like a silver sun, like a broad, 
white, silken sail. Nearer and nearer they came, and 
then there was a cry of greeting, and such good appe- 
tites for breakfast or dinner. Their appetites were 
just as good now—indeed better, for they were starv- 
ing—but where was father or mother, where were the 
broad, white wings, the silken sail, the great silver 
sun? Oh, how they strained their eyes and stretched 
their poor, little, long necks over the side of the nest, 
to try to see them, to see if they were not coming, if 
there was only a speck of white in the distance ! 
But they saw nothing, for father and mother had 
both been shot. And, now, they grew so weak with 
hunger that they could not hold their heads up, any 
more. They laid them down in the nest, and their eyes 
closed, and their poor little voices only came in whis- 
pers, ‘‘ Feed us! feed us!”—they had been screams 
before. Then even the whispers ceased, the beaks 
could not be opened, and slowly, slowly they starved. 
And those are the feathers—feathers that have 
been got in that way—which the poor women whose 
hearts the little demon has frozen, wear in their hats. 
In those hats they go out to concerts, and hear songs 
that are all of love and tenderness, and music that 
seems to have been made by the angels in heaven ; in 
those hats they go to meetings that are held, perhaps, 
for some good and just thing—to save people from 
