“It’s a new one, he in the cage,” he said, quite sadly. “Neither I nor the missis could get along without one. Old Mag died quite easy, of nothing but old age, and old he was, to be sure. He’d have died years ago, if he’d been any one else’s bird. He’d have been shot years ago if he’d lived his own natural life. They say it’s cruel keeping birds in cages; but if ever a bird was happy, that one was. And what’s more,” he said, with a touch of pathos in his voice which I have often remembered since then, when I have been telling his story to others, “he had his share in making others happy, and that’s more than can be said for some of us, my boy. However, come along, and I’ll spin you the yarn (as you seafaring folks say); and, indeed, I’ll be glad to tell it to some one, for poor old Mag’s sake. Honour where honour is due.” We sat down on the bench by the front door, and Mrs. Reynardson, bonny and bright-eyed, came and gave me her hand and sat down with us. The farmer paused a bit to collect his thoughts, while he pensively tickled the newly-installed genius of the house with the sealing-waxed end of his long pipe. The genius seemed not unworthy of his venerable predecessor, for he showed no resentment, and settled himself down comfortably to hear the tale—or to roost. “Now then. Once upon a time,” said I, to jog his memory. But that dear old fellow never did things quite like other people; perhaps that was why I was so fond of him. He withdrew his pipe-stem from the cage, and patting the back of his wife’s hand with it in passing (an action I did not then understand), he pointed it in the direction of the hills which bounded our view. “If you were to go up there,” he said, “just where you see the gap in the long line of trees, you would see below you, on the other side, a small village, and on beyond the village you’d see a bit of a hillock, with three big elms on it. And if you got near enough, I’ll be bound you’d see a magpie’s nest in the tallest tree to the right. There always was one, when I was a boy there, and there has always been one whenever I’ve happened to be over there since; and it was in that nest that my old Mag was born, and I was born within sight of it. “Of course, we knew of it, we boys of the village, and we’d have been up there often, only that tree was a bad one to climb, as the magpie knew very well. Easy work when you got to the branches, but, unlike most elms, this one had fifteen feet of big broad stem before you reached them. None of us could get up that fifteen feet, though the bark was rough and we could get some hold with fingers and toes; sooner or later we were sure to come slipping down, and it was lucky for us that the grass was long and soft below.