BIRDS IN A VILLAGE 75 



be out by to-morrow or the next day, and I hope 

 you little fellows won't try to drag them out 

 before then." 



They at once protested that they had no such 

 intention. They said that they never robbed 

 birds' nests ; that there were several nests at home 

 in the garden and orchard, one of a nightingale 

 with three eggs in it, but that they never took 

 an egg. But some of the boys they knew, they 

 said, took all the eggs they found; and there was 

 one boy who got into every orchard and garden 

 in the place, who was so sharp that few nests 

 escaped him, and every nest he found he de- 

 stroyed, breaking the eggs if there were any, and 

 if there were young birds killing them. 



Not, perhaps, without first mutilating them, I 

 thought; for I know something of this kind of 

 young "human devil," to use the phrase which 

 Canon Wilberforce has made so famous in an- 

 other connexion. Later on I heard much more 

 about the exploits of this champion bird-destroyer 

 of the village from (strange to say) a bird-catcher 

 by trade, a man of a rather low type of counte- 

 nance, and who lived, when at home, in a London 

 slum. On the common where he spread his nets 



