fable concerning a happy little family of swallows, whose sudden tragedy
he had seen with his own boyish, pitying eyes.

In a little vinery attached to an old country house which the Mesuriers
had rented for a month or so for certain successive summers, two
swallows had built their nest, and, in due course, there were three
young swallows to keep them company. It was understood that the door of
the vinery must be left open, that the parent swallows might fly to and
fro for food; but by some accident it chanced that the door was one day
closed, and the vinery not visited again for several days. When at last
the door was opened again, the sight that met young eyes was one Henry
had never forgotten. Three little starved swallows, hardly bigger than
butterflies, lay upon the floor, and from the nest above hung the long
horse-hairs with which the parents had vainly sought to anchor them
safely to the home. But still sadder details were forthcoming, when the
children, who had been wondering what had become of the parents, had
suddenly discovered their wasted bodies in the grass a yard or two away
from the vinery door. A few days ago this had been a happy, thriving
home, and now it was absolutely desolated, done away with for ever. It
needed no exceptional imagination or sympathy to conceive the agonised
longing of the parents, as they had dashed themselves again and again
upon that cruel, unyielding door, hearing the piteous cries of their
young ones within, and the anguish in which their exhausted little lives
had at last gone out. The young swallows had died for lack of food; but
the old ones had died--for love. Had some other hand brought them food,
would the young ones have missed the old ones like that?