John Flint's face was troubled. "It's all a muddle, anyhow," said he. "You can't blame the bluejay, because he was born so, and it's bluejay nature to act like that when it gets the chance. But there's the other bird--it looks bad. It is bad. For a thief to come into a little nest like that, that she'd been brooding on, and twittering to, and feeling so good and so happy about--Man, I'd have given a month's work and pay to have saved that nest! It's not fair. God! Isn't there _some_ way to save the good ones from the bad ones?" There he stood, in the middle of the path, staring ruefully at the wrecked bit of twigs and moss and down that had been a wee home; and with more of sorrow than anger at the feathered crook who had done the damage. The thing was slight in itself, and more than common--just one of the unrecorded humble tragedies which daily engulf the Little Peoples. But I had seen a butterfly's wing save him alive; and so I did not doubt now that a little bird's nest could weigh down the balance which would put him definitely upon the side of good and of God. "I think there is a way," said Laurence, gravely, "and that is to beat them to it and stand them off. All the rest is talk and piffle--the only way to save is to save. There are no halfway measures; also, it's a lifetime job, full of kicks and cuffs and ingratitude and misunderstanding and failure and loneliness, and sometimes even worse things yet. But you do manage to sometimes save the nests and the fledglings, and you do sometimes escape the pain of hearing the mothers lamenting. And that's the only reward a decent mortal ought to hope for. I reckon it's about the best reward there is, this side of heaven." The Butterfly Man swallowed this a bit ungraciously. "You've got a devil of a way of twisting things into parables. I'm talking birds and thinking birds, and here you must go and make my birds people! I wasn't thinking about people--that is, I wasn't, until you have to go and put the notion into my head. It's not fair. The thing's bad enough already, without your lugging folks into it and making it worse!" Laurence looked at him steadily. "You've got to think of people, when you see things like that," said he, slowly; "otherwise you only half-see. I have to think of people--of kids, particularly--and their mothers." He turned as he spoke, and stared out over our garden, with its sunny spaces, and its shrubs and flowers, and trees, to where, over in the sky a pillar of smoke rose steadily, endlessly, and merged into a cloud overhanging the quiet little town. "The pillar of cloud by day," said he "that leads the children--" He stopped, and the whimsical smile faded from his face; his jaw set.