A Tale of Two Martins 
to do anything so outrageous as to take 
possession of their nest. 
Despairingly they circled round and 
clung to the nest, attempting to enter, 
but again and again they were driven 
away by the sparrow and his wife in- 
side. The sparrows’ strong, hard beaks 
were such terrible weapons compared 
with their own short and feeble ones 
that they were quite helpless against 
them, and felt that once more all their 
toil and labour had been in vain. 
There was no help for it : the sparrows 
had to be left in their unlawful possession 
of the nest, while the martins had to begin 
all over again. They felt that misfor- 
tunes never came singly, and it was 
quite late in the summer, after many 
similar attempts and failures, that they 
at last succeeded in hatching a brood of 
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