Well, these poor White Egrets--these masterpieces that are always being destroyed--are birds that live, mostly, in America--in Mexico, and California, and Florida, and, I think, all over South and Central America. They live in the swamps and lagunes--as they are called--of the great forests, where trees grow all about in the water--such dark, gloomy, wonderful places--and the servants of the little demon, whose business it is to kill them, have to follow them to those places, and live there, too. Of course it is very unhealthy for them, and they often die there; but the women with the frozen hearts do not mind that, any more than they mind the Egrets being shot. They want the feathers, and when they pay for the feathers they pay for the lives as well--for they are honest, although their hearts have been frozen. Perhaps you will wonder how men can live at all, in such places as those. Of course, as it is all water, they have to live in boats or canoes, and as soon as they have found out a pool or creek, where the White Egrets come to catch fish, or some trees where they have built their nests, they cover their boats over with reeds or rushes or ferns or the branches of trees, so that, even though you were to come quite close to them, you would not think they were boats at all, but only part of the forest. That is what the poor White Egrets think, for the men sit in their covered-up boats, quite silently--without speaking a word--and, as soon as they come near enough to them, fire at them and kill them.