O Guide of the young Tribe! Know you the Twelfth Secret of the Woods? Know you what walked around your tent on that thirtieth night of your camp out? No! I think you knew, if you continued for thirty nights, but you knew not that you knew. These things, then, you should have in heart, and give to those you are leading. The Great Spirit does not put out good air in the daytime and poison air at night. It is the same pure air at night, only cooler. Therefore use more clothing while you sleep. But while the outdoor air is pure, the indoor may be foul. Therefore sleep out of doors, and you will learn the blessedness of the night, and the night air, with its cooling kindly influence laden. Those who come here to our Camp from life in town and sleeping in close rooms, are unaccustomed, and nervous it may be, so that they sleep little at first. But each night brings its balm of rest. Strength comes. Some know it in a week. The town-worn and nerve-weary find it at farthest in half a moon. And in one full moon be sure of this, when the night comes down you will find the blessed balm that the Great Spirit meant for all of us. You will sleep, a calm sweet vitalizing sleep. You will know this the twelfth secret of the woods: What walked around your tent that thirtieth night? You know not, you heard nothing, for you slept. Yet when the morning comes you feel and know that round your couch, with wings and hands upraised in blessed soothing influence, there passed the Angel of the Night, with healing under her wings, and peace. You saw her not, you heard her not, but the sweet healing of her presence will be with you for many after moons. FOOTNOTES: [C] The Guide will note that there are rare exceptions to these rules. [D] The Guide will remember that Totemism and Tabuism were ideas which grew up long after the use of Totems began. THINGS TO DO [Illustration: Nests of Kingbird, Oriole, Vireo, Robin, Goldfinch, Phoebe (1/4 life size)] Things to Do TALE 73 Bird-nesting in Winter What good are old bird-nests? These are some of the ends they serve. A Deermouse seeking the safety of a bramble thicket and a warm house, will make his own nest in the forsaken home of a Cat-bird. A Gray Squirrel will roof over the open nest of a Crow or Hawk and so make it a castle in the air for himself. But one of the strangest uses is this: The Solitary Sandpiper is a bird that cannot build a tree nest for itself and yet loves to give to its eggs the safety of a high place; so it lays in the old nest of a Robin, or other tree bird, and there its young are hatched. But this is only in the Far North. There are plenty of old bird-nests left for other uses, and for you. Bird-nesting in summer is wicked, cruel, and against the law. But bird-nesting in winter is good fun and harms no one, if we take only the little nests that are built in forked twigs, or on rock ledges. For most little birds prefer to make a new nest for themselves each season.