“Now, boys, back into the workroom, and if any one of you has not made a house for a tree-trunk bird, I am sure that he will begin one to-day.” ----- [2] These fine charts may be purchased from the Audubon Society, State of Massachusetts. XIV FOUR NOTABLES _Grouse, Quail, Woodcock, and the Wood Duck_ The Saturday before Thanksgiving Tommy Todd came trudging up the road toward “the General’s,” with an extremely contented expression on a face that was usually more than cheerful, while he kept turning his head to admire something that he carried in his right hand, twisting and swinging it as he walked. The something was a beautiful male Ruffed Grouse, or Partridge, as it is commonly called, in all the bravery of its glossy neck-ruff and tail that when spread looks like that of a miniature Wild Turkey. Together with the Grouse was a pair of Quail in rich, brown autumn coats and snowy throats that excel those of the White-throated Sparrow itself. Tommy’s father and his elder brother Joe, the Fair Meadows blacksmith, had taken two “days off,” and gone a-hunting up to the upland brush-country beyond the river woods, and these birds, a part of the result, were a gift for Gray Lady and Goldilocks. Not only were the birds in fine condition, but they were nicely tied together with some sprays of trailing ground-pine and a little tuft of pungent wintergreen with its coral berries. Gray Lady took the birds, and as she thanked Tommy for them, glanced toward Goldilocks, who sat in the library window watching for the children to come. When the young girl saw the birds, she gave an exclamation, half of pleasure at their plumage, half of sorrow that they were dead, for to keep everything alive and as happy as possible was her inherent nature. But she knew that these were game- or “chicken-birds,” as she had once called them when a mere baby, whose fate was to be eaten, and that Tommy’s father had only followed a legitimate desire for outdoor life and its sports when he had tramped more than thirty miles for the hunting. So she merely said, as she smoothed the beautifully shaded feathers, “I wish the Kind Hearts’ Club could do something to make game-birds have a _very_ comfortable, good time, the part of the year when they are not hunted; do you think we could, mother? For I don’t think that this shy kind of bird will come to the lunch-counter, and I’ve been wondering lately what they find to eat in such cold winters as the last. Miss Wilde has told me that for weeks last winter the snow was so deep that in going, from where she lived, a mile to school, she never even saw a fence top, so if game-birds ‘feed chiefly on the ground after the manner of barnyard fowls, roosting in low trees and bushes,’ as one of my books says, I do not see why they do not freeze and starve.”