Lake George 
when there was another collapse. This seemed 
a little suspicious. Yet surely there was no 
conscienceless contractor in //#zs case, for the 
swallows were building their own houses; and, 
moreover, in this little rural paradise, it was 
hard to believe that any human being would be 
wantonly destructive. But, upon inquiry, I 
was told it was probably the doings of a young 
rascal in the neighborhood, who perpetrated 
all the small villanies that are possible in a 
diminutive village. I found where he lived, 
and appealed, not to his heart, which might 
be an unknown quantity, but to his pocket. 
Whereupon he agreed, for a stipulated sum, 
not to molest the nests until the young were 
hatched. He assured me, however, that the 
nests had sometimes fallen of their own accord ; 
and there was a little reason to suppose that 
this might have been the case in the present 
instance. For, when the nests were begun, 
the ground was extremely dry, and perhaps 
the birds’ saliva was insufficient to moisten 
and agglutinate the material. At all events, 
whether due to the boy’s reformation, or to 
the rain that followed, there was no further 
trouble. 
One morning, in passing a muddy place in 
213 
