38 What Birds Have Done With Me 



but, as he turns it over, its bare breast throws a 

 flood of light on the living things turning into 

 dead leaves, at a note of warning from the mother 

 bird that he has killed. Instantly, he is in a panic, 

 a revulsion of feeling sweeps over him that will 

 break his heart unless he can do something to 

 stay its fury. Away goes the gun, and the salt 

 out of the pail, and he is down on his knees 

 searching everywhere for the motherless chicks. 

 They elude him, like the phantom shadows we 

 pursue in unhappy dreams. His thought had 

 been to capture them all, and put them in the salt 

 pail and carry them home to be mothered by a 

 hen; for he knew that old Spot, who wanted to 

 mother the kitten when the hawks carried away 

 her own chicks, would take them all. He went 

 over the ground again and again, and when search 

 had to be abandoned as hopeless, he had one chick 

 that he had stepped on with his bare foot and 

 crushed its life out. When he dropped the dead 

 mother to pursue the young, she had fallen on 

 her back with her pitiful naked breast still oozing 

 blood, calling to the God of all mercies, the small 

 boy thought, for vengeance. Putting the dead 

 baby bird upon the pulseless bosom of its mother, 

 he cast himself down beside both, a forlorn 

 little Cain, who could find no place of repentance 

 though he sought it with tears. A couple of 

 lines that Kipling wrote long afterward, came 



