and the only way to avoid writing tragedy is either to stop long before you get through, or not to begin. I cannot stop before I get through, on account of a habit I contracted when I was writing for the magazines at a cent a word, and, moreover, I need the royalty on this book. A big book can be sold for more than a little one, every time. If you don’t believe me, go and price a dictionary. The cheaper books are merely a part of the dictionary arranged in another order.Hitherto, I have failed to mention the fact that Jim was married. I knew nothing of it until he was also a parent, and I never knew how much of a parent he was, for he was singularly uncommunicative on the subject and his nest was upon an inaccessible height. He stole an empty bottle out of my cabin and kept it in a crotch of a tree near by, with the cork which belonged to it tied to the neck by a string. Jim was a cautious Bird. On nights when I left the pan of milk outdoors, Jim would not sleep with me. When I discovered this, I set myself to figure out the connection.

I left the pan of milk in an open space in the yard one bright moonlight night, and, as I half expected, Jim refused to share my pillow. I went to bed as usual, but in a few minutes got up and watched him from a secluded position. He walked around the pan of milk a few times, cawing under his breath in an important, businesslike way, then flew off for the bottle. He returned with it, and filled it from the pan, using his beak for the purpose, and tilting the pan with his foot when the milk got shallow.

When the bottle was full, he pounded in the cork, grasped it in his claws, and flew away with it towards his nest. I surmised then that Jim was so much of a parent that Mrs. Jim did not have milk enough for all the little ones, and the husband and father was compelled to forage for the balance. Deeply touched, I left a large can of malted milk tablets on the window-sill, open. Within two days, they were all gone.

It was Hoot-Mon, the great Owl, who put an end to Jim. Between the Owls and the Crows there is lifelong enmity. An Owl will attack a Crow at night and a Crow will attack an Owl in the daytime. I knew Hoot-Mon, of course—every Little Brother of the Woods knows Hoot-Mon,—but an article on him had not as yet been ordered, and so I made no special study of him.

It was my fault, too. After Jim was asleep, I put the pan of milk outside for fear it would sour. When he woke and missed it, he scratched my face violently. Trembling with rage, I put him out, saying, as I did so: “You miserable, low-down, black beast, I wish I might never see you again!”

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