Lake George 



when there was another collapse. This seemed 

 a little suspicious. Yet surely there was no 

 conscienceless contractor in this case, for the 

 swallows were building their own houses ; and, 

 moreover, in this little rural paradise, it was 

 hard to believe that any human being would be 

 wantonly destructive. But, upon inquiry, I 

 was told it was probably the doings of a young 

 rascal in the neighborhood, who perpetrated 

 all the small villanies that are possible in a 

 diminutive village. I found where he lived, 

 and appealed, not to his heart, which might 

 be an unknown quantity, but to his pocket. 

 Whereupon he agreed, for a stipulated sum, 

 not to molest the nests until the young were 

 hatched. He assured me, however, that the 

 nests had sometimes fallen of their own accord ; 

 and there was a little reason to suppose that 

 this might have been the case in the present 

 instance. For, when the nests were begun, 

 the ground was extremely dry, and perhaps 

 the birds' saliva was insufficient to moisten 

 and agglutinate the material. At all events, 

 whether due to the boy's reformation, or to 

 the rain that followed, there was no further 

 trouble. 



One morning, in passing a muddy place in 

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