At last the younger birds began to get tired of this game, and having finished their own nests, were no longer in want of the sticks that Jetsom collected. Gaffer began to get sulky and anxious. He sat on his bough and saw the nest beginning to rise at last: something must be done at once. He waited till both birds were away together; then down he went on the nest and began to pull it all to pieces. But it was a long job for one bill, and before he had done, back came the owners. Gaffer was surprised, and was quite unable to persuade them that he was only helping to arrange the sticks; it was all too plain. Jetsom fell into a fury that frightened his poor wife out of her wits, and before Gaffer could stammer out something about “the problems of life,” he was attacked, pecked, driven from one tree to another, worried, pushed, flapped at, till his one eye closed for ever, and he fell to the ground lifeless. But the problems of life had been too much for Jetsom. He felt a moment of glorious triumph as his enemy fell, and was just returning to his wife and nest with pride and honour, with heart swelling with joy and hope: when his senses gave way, his bill opened, his eyes grew dim, and in the moment of victory he expired, falling to the ground by the side of his conquered foe. He had solved his problem. * * * * * Half an hour later a gentleman walking down the road, stopped to watch a strange assembly of rooks in an adjoining meadow. They were standing in a large circle, making a great noise; in the centre of the circle stood a single rook, ruffled and miserable-looking. As he watched, the noise gradually ceased, and after a moment’s silence, the whole company rose on their wings and rushed upon the victim in the middle. The noise again became deafening, and nothing could be seen but a _mêlée_ of wings, tails, and beaks, on the spot where the solitary bird had been seen a moment before. The gentleman scrambled over the hedge, waving his stick and shouting: the rooks flew away with loud cawings. When he reached the spot, he found nothing but a mangled mass of feathers--the lifeless body of one miserable bird. It was the body of Jetsom’s widow. She too had solved the problem of her life, and the rookery was no longer troubled with revolutionary ideas. A QUESTION BEGINNING WITH “WHY.”