The Lay of the Band 
grosbeak, and that I was about to get a clue to its 
nest. Then up to the slab where he ate the June- 
bugs scrambled the chipmunk, and the rose-red spot 
on the breast of the grosbeak dissolved into a big 
scarlet-red strawberry. And by its long wedge shape 
I knew it was one of my new variety. 
I hurried across to the patch and found every 
berry gone, while a line of bloody fragments led me 
back to the orchard wall, where a half dozen fresh 
calyx crowns completed my second discovery. 
No, it did not complete it. It took a little watching 
to find out that the whole family — all seven ! —were 
after berries. They were picking them half ripe, even, 
and actually storing them away, canning them down 
in the cavernous depths of the stone pile! 
Alarmed? Yes, and I was wrathful, too. The taste 
for strawberries is innate, original; you can’t be 
human without it. But joy in chipmunks is a culti- 
vated liking, zesthetic in its nature. What chance in 
such a circumstance has the nature-lover with the 
human man? What shadow of doubt as to his choice 
between the chipmunks and the strawberries ? 
I had no gun then and no time to go over to my 
neighbor’s to borrow his. SoI stationed myself near 
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