The old man sitting there, waiting for the meadow-lark to appear, thinks not of the insect people, but of the lark. With the tip of his strong cane he breaks off a piece of the serried bark, and a spider scurries down the side of the log and into the grass. He chips off another piece, and a bevy of sow-bugs make haste to tumble over and "play dead," curling their legs under their sides, but recovering their senses and scurrying off after the spider. The cane continues to chip off the bark, and down tumble all sorts of wood people, some of them hiding like a flash in the first moist earth they come to; others never stopping until they are well under the log, where experience has taught them they will be safe out of harm's way. And they declare to themselves, and to each other, that they will never budge from under that log until it is midnight "and that wicked meadow-lark is fast asleep." Of course it is no other than the meadow-lark the insect people are running away from! They never saw the old man, nor the tip of his cane that was doing all the mischief. They know their feathered foe of old. What care they for his song? He is always on their trail. So when the old man sat down heavily on the log, and the point of his cane jarred the loose bark, out tumbled the tenants, expecting each of them to be presented with a bill. But the bill of their dreaded enemy is a rod or two away. He has had his breakfast already. It was composed of all sorts of winged and creeping folk, including many an insect infant bundled all up in its swaddling-clothes and not half conscious of its fate. It was for this very purpose that he was up so early. Of course the poets did not take his breakfast into account when they wrote verses about his "rising with the sun" and singing with "the first beam of day." Nothing in the world brought him out of bed save his ever-present appetite. And the farmers have cause to bless their stars that the meadow-lark has an appetite of his own. Also, that he and his spouse make their nest in the grass, and that the baby larks get about on the ground long before they are able to fly fence-high. But we are leaving the old man sitting too long on that damp log. He may catch a cold. Of one thing we are certain, he will catch sight of "that rogue lark" if he waits half an hour. He used to wait just that way when he was a boy, though to keep still half as long in any other place for any other purpose would have been a physical impossibility. His specs are on the end of his nose now, for the old man has good far sight, and he squints knowingly at a bunch of meadow-grass three rods away. Who says the eye of the aged grows dim? The eye of this particular old man never shone brighter even when he climbed that identical elm and came near losing his balance, reaching after the orchard oriole's nest that swung, empty, just at tantalizing distance. What did the boy want of that nest? He just wanted to get it, that was all.