74 NATURE STUDY. 



one of a belated nestfull, born out of due season and too 

 young to take the journey, or whether he was loth to 

 leave the flesh-pots of Egypt in the shop for the more un- 

 certain mamna of the southern wilderness, or whether, as 

 subsequent events seemed to prove, he was unable to tear 

 himself away from his great love, David, the Candle- 

 maker. 



Every morning he w^as on the great platform, where the 

 tallow was set to cool, waiting for the door to be opened 

 so he could come inside, and when the nights grew very 

 frosty he stayed inside — overhead, underfoot, and into 

 mischief generally, unless a cat, dog or stranger came in, 

 when he retreated to the fir tree outside. 



David grew very fond of his little blue-coated friend, 

 whom he weighed down with the name of Andrew Jack- 

 son, lightened for daily use to Jack. Jack developed all 

 the mischievous traits of his tribe, and an account of the 

 trouble he made would fill a book. As long as he did 

 nothing worse than to cram choice greasy scraps between 

 the leaves of valuable papers in the little desk, or get the 

 pen from the holder and hide it in a crack of the timbers 

 overhead, or pull the cork from the ammonia bottle, his 

 misdeeds were winked at, but when he took to punching 

 holes in every candle on the top rows of the finished box- 

 es, making them unmarketable, it was too much. 



David sallied forth, and somewhere found an old cage — 

 a ver>' large one, that once had served as a sort of bird ho- 

 tel — which he put in the house kitchen, and then, softly 

 clapping his old hat over Jack, carried him awa}' into cap- 

 tivity. He took very kindly to cage life, his only grief 

 being separation from David, whom he greeted with 

 screams of joy whenever he entered the room, and it made 

 him supremely happy to perch on David's shoulder or eat 

 from his fingers. One warm day in spring, when Jack's 

 friends and relatives had returned from the sunny south- 



