older birds on top of one. It was a meager egg, and a feeble
baby that pipped its shell. The remainder of the family stood
and took nearly all the food so that she almost starved in the
nest, and she never really knew the luxury of a hearty meal until
her elders had flown. That lasted only a few days; for the
others went then, and their parents followed them so far afield
that the poor little soul, clamouring alone in the nest, almost
perished. Hunger-driven, she climbed to the edge and exercised
her wings until she managed some sort of flight to a neighbouring
bush. She missed the twig and fell to the ground, where she lay
cold and shivering.

She cried pitifully, and was almost dead when a brown-faced,
barefoot boy, with a fishing-pole on his shoulder, passed and
heard her.

"Poor little thing, you are almost dead," he said. "I know what
I'll do with you. I'll take you over and set you in the bushes
where I heard those other redbirds, and then your ma will feed
you."

The boy turned back and carefully set her on a limb close to one
of her brothers, and there she got just enough food to keep her
alive.

So her troubles continued. Once a squirrel chased her, and she
saved herself by crowding into a hole so small her pursuer could
not follow. The only reason she escaped a big blue racer when
she went to take her first bath, was that a hawk had his eye on
the snake and snapped it up at just the proper moment to save the