he leaped, striking fiercely and screaming out all the fearful terms he
knew--what would have been the wildest of all abandonment of profanity
had he but acquired the words for such performance. His father caught
him by the arm, and he struggled with him. It was simply a young
madman. Carried across the creek and held in bonds for a brief period,
he suddenly burst out sobbing, and then went to inspect the ravished
nest where the two old birds hovered mourningly about, and where the
remaining nestlings seemed dead at first, though they subsequently
recovered, so gruesomely had the fascination of their natural enemy
affected them!

What happened then? What happens when any father and mother have
occasion to consider the matter of a son, a child, bone of their bone
and flesh of their flesh, who has transgressed some rule they have set
up for him wisely, thoughtfully, but with no provision for emotional or
extraordinary contingencies, because it would be useless, since he
could not comprehend exceptions. They took him to the house. The
father looked at him queerly, but with an expression that was far
removed from anger on his face, and his mother took the young man aside
and washed him, and put on another hickory shirt, and told him that his
sparrows would raise a pretty good family after all, and that it
wouldn't be so hard for the old birds to feed three as four.

Early that same evening a six-foot father strolled over to the place of
the nearest settler, a mile or so away, and the two men walked back,
talking together as neighbors will in a new country, though they do not
so well in cities, and when they reached the creek one of them, the
father, cut a forked twig and lifted the black-snake to its full
length. Its head, raised even with his, allowed its tail to barely
touch the ground. Evidently the men were interested, and evidently one