“Yes, Sarah, I should like to protect the game-birds also, unless in cases where people, living away from places where other food can be had, are really hungry. But there are two sides to this question, and the Kind Hearts’ Club must always try to look at both, so as to be sure that in being just to one, the other may not be misjudged. All over the country there are hundreds of men who, for nearly all the year, are tied to desks in offices, and their heads are weary and their bodies cramped. The love of hunting is born in man, probably an inheritance from his ancestors, who hunted for their living, just as the bird inherits the instincts of migration from its parents and performs the journeys even when there is no need. “This love of hunting leads the men out into the woods for a few weeks, or even days, each year, and, besides the hunting, they meet Nature face to face, and, whether they know it or not, come back better able to take up the work of life, which is a harder struggle as the world gets older and older. [Illustration: Dr. C. K. Hodge, Photo. JUST OUT (Chicks of Domesticated Ruffed Grouse)] “Some people may not agree with me, but I had a good warm-hearted father, who gave his life in the cause of humanity; yet he loved fair hunting, and Goldilocks’ father did, also. So I think that the Kind Hearts’ Club will not only be doing the game-bird a service, but man also, if it can make and carry out a plan to feed and shelter these birds, even in the space of Fair Meadows township. “I have been talking this over with some men who know the haunts of these birds, and next month, if the big boys join us, I will tell you my plan; for it will need sturdy fellows to carry it out, though you can all help.” “Where do the Grouse nest, in bushes or on the ground?” asked Dave; “I’ve never seen one, though I’ve found a Woodcock’s nest, and touched the bird on it, she was so tame.” “They make their nest on the ground, Dave,” said Gray Lady; “not much of a nest, merely a few leaves scratched together in a tree hollow. Now we have these real birds here (for later I know that Tommy will let me share them with Miss Wilde’s mother, who has been so ill, and her appetite needs tempting), let us spend the morning with the game-birds; Dave shall tell us of his Woodcock’s nest, and I have many little bits in the scrap-book about the others, besides remembrances of my own. “Children, can you realize that when I was a girl of twelve, I could stand of a May morn, by the old orchard bars, where the Birdland gate is now, and hear twenty or thirty Bob-whites calling all the way across the fields and brush-lots, until the Ridge shut off the sound? BOB-WHITE