"Now, the other youngster had not been able, just at first, to make out what was happening. He thought his sister had gone down to the bottom for fun. But when he saw her coming up, locked in that deadly struggle with their old enemy, his heart swelled with fury. He sprang clear out into the deep water when the struggling pair reached the surface, lashing and splashing, and the mink had only bare time to s.n.a.t.c.h a single breath of air before he found another adversary on his back, and was borne down inexorably to the bottom.

"Just about this time a perfectly new idea flashed across the mink's mind, and it startled him. For the first time in his life he thought that perhaps he was a fool. Young otters seemed to be so much older than he had imagined them, so much more unreasonable and bad-tempered, and to have so many teeth. It was a question, he decided--while he was being mauled around among the water weeds--that would bear some thinking over. He wanted to think about it right away. There was no time like the present for digesting these new ideas. Seeing a big root sticking out of the bank, close to the bottom, with a tremendous effort he clawed himself under it and sc.r.a.ped off his antagonists. Shooting out on the other side, he darted off like an eel through the water gra.s.s, and hurried away up stream to a certain hollow log he knew, where he might lick his bites and meditate undisturbed. The two Little Furry Ones stared after him for a moment, then crawled out upon the bank and lay down in the sunny gra.s.s."

Uncle Andy got up with an air of decision. "Let's go catch some fish,"

he said. "They ought to be beginning to rise about now, over by Spring Brook."

"But what became of the two Little Furry Ones after that?" demanded the Babe, refusing to stir.

"Well, _now_," protested Uncle Andy in an injured voice, "you _know_ I ain't like Bill and some other folk. I don't know everything. But I've every reason to believe that, with any kind of otter luck, they lived to grow up and have families of their own--and taught every one of them, you may be sure, to slide down hill. As likely as not, that very slide over yonder belongs to one of their families. Now come along and don't ask any more questions."

CHAPTER II

THE BLACK IMPS OF PINE-TOP

"I think I'd _like_ to be a bird," murmured the Babe, wistfully gazing up at the dark green, feathery top of the great pine, certain of whose branches were tossing and waving excitedly against the blue, although there was not a breath of wind to ruffle the expanse of Silverwater.

"I _think_ I'd like it--rather." He added the qualification as a prudent after-thought, lest Uncle Andy should think him foolish.

"In _summer_!" suggested Uncle Andy, following the Babe's eyes toward the agitated pine-top.

"Of _course_ in summer!" corrected the Babe hastily. "It must be awful to be a bird in winter!" And he shuddered.

"You'd better not say 'of course' in that confident way," said Uncle Andy rather severely. "You know so many of the birds go away south in the winter; and they manage to have a pretty jolly time of it, I should think."

For a moment the Babe looked abashed. Then his face brightened.

"But then, it _is_ summer, for _them_, isn't it?" said he sweetly.

Uncle Andy gave him a suspicious look, to see if he realized the success of his retort. "Had me there!" he thought to himself. But the Babe's face betrayed no sign of triumph, nothing but that eager appet.i.te for information of which Uncle Andy so highly approved.

"So it depends on what kind of a bird, eh, what?" said he, deftly turning the point. Then he scratched a sputtering sulphur match on the long-suffering leg of his trousers.

"Yes," said the Babe, with more decision now. "I'd like to be a crow."

Uncle Andy smoked meditatively for several minutes before replying, till the Babe began to grow less confident as to the wisdom of his choice. But as he gazed up at those green pine-tops, so clear against the blue, all astir with black wings and gay, excited _ca_-ings, he took courage again. Certainly _those_ crows, at least, were enjoying themselves immensely.

And he had always had a longing to be able to play in the tops of the trees.

"Well," said Uncle Andy at last, "perhaps you're not so _very_ far off, this time. If I couldn't be an eagle, or a hawk, or a wild goose, or one of those big-horned owls that we hear every night, or a humming-bird, then I'd rather be a crow than most. A crow has got enemies, of course, but then he's got brains, so that he knows how to make a fool of most of his enemies. And he certainly does manage to get a lot of fun out of life, taking it all in all, except when the owl comes gliding around his roosting places in the black nights, or an extra bitter midwinter frost catches him after a rainy thaw."

He paused and drew hard on his pipe, with that far-away look in his eyes which the Babe had learned to regard as the forerunner to a story.

There were some interesting questions to ask, of course; but though bursting with curiosity as to why anyone should find it better to be a wild goose, or even a hummingbird, than a crow, the Babe sternly repressed himself. He would ask those questions by and by, that he promised himself. But he had learned that to speak inopportunely was sometimes to make Uncle Andy change his mind and shut up like an oyster. He was determined that he would not open his mouth till the story should be well under way, till his uncle should be himself too much interested to be willing to stop. And then, to his horror, just as he was recording this sagacious resolution in his mind, he heard himself demanding:

"But why after a rainy thaw?"

It was out before he could choke it back. There was nothing for him to do but stick to it and gaze at his uncle with disarming innocence.

Uncle Andy turned upon him a glance of slow contumely.

"If you were going to be caught out in a blizzard, would you rather be in dry clothes or in wet ones?" he inquired.

The Babe smiled apologetically and resumed his study of the agitated pine-tops, whence, from time to time, a crow, or two or three, would burst forth for a brief, whirling flight, as if to show how it was done. Then other flights were made, which seemed to the Babe extremely brief and hesitating, as if the flyers were nervous when they found themselves out clear of the branches and suspended on their own wings over the empty deeps of air. Presently there was a sudden tumultuous outburst of _ca_-ing, the branches shook, and a whole flock, perhaps two score or more, swarmed into the air. After a few moments of clamorous confusion they all flew off in the direction of the muddy flats at the lower end of the lake. The pine-tops subsided into stillness. But an occasional hoa.r.s.e croak or muttered guttural showed that a few of their occupants had been left at home. The Babe wondered what it had all been about, but he succeeded in holding his tongue.

In a moment or two this heroic self-restraint had its reward.

"Trying to show some of the youngsters how to fly, and jeering at the timid ones and the stupid ones!" explained Uncle Andy.

"Oh!" said the Babe, with a long, appreciative inflection.

Uncle Andy paused, leaving an opening for more questions. But the Babe refused to be drawn, so presently, with a comprehending grin, he went on:

"It's rather a small affair for crows, you know, this colony of theirs here on Silverwater. I suppose they've been crowded out from the places they really prefer, along the skirts of the settlements on the other side of the Ridge. They would rather live always somewhere near the farms and the cleared fields. Not that they have any special affection for man. Far from it. They dislike him, and distrust him, and seem to think him a good deal of a fool, too. His so-called 'scarecrows' are a great joke to them, and have been known at times to afford some fine materials for the lining of their nests. But they find him so useful in many really important ways that they establish their colonies in his neighborhood whenever they possibly can."

Here Uncle Andy made another long pause. He looked at the Babe suspiciously.

"Is anything the matter?" he demanded.

"No, thank you, Uncle Andy," replied the Babe politely.

"But you haven't asked a single question for at least seven minutes,"

said Uncle Andy.

"I was too busy listening to you," explained the Babe. "But there's one I'd like to ask, if it's all the same to you."

"Well, fire away," said his uncle.

"_Why_ did they all fly away like that, as if they had just remembered something awfully important? And why would you rather be a little tiny humming-bird than a crow? And why did it take the whole flock that way to teach the young ones to fly? And--and why are they afraid, when they are _born_ to fly? And why do they make fun of the stupid ones?

And why would you like to be a wild goose? And, and--"

"Stop! stop!" cried Uncle Andy. "I didn't know you had a Gatling about you when I told you to fire away. You wait and shoot those questions at Bill, just like that, to-night."

"Well, but why--"

"No, you must not interrupt," insisted Uncle Andy.

"But you _asked_ me! I was just as quiet--"

"I didn't know what I was doing!" said his uncle. "And I can't possibly answer all those questions. Why, I could never begin to remember half of them."

"I can," interposed the Babe.

"Oh, you needn't mind," said Uncle Andy, hastily. "But perhaps, if you listen with great care, you _may_ find answers to some of them in what I am going to tell you. Of course, I don't promise, for I don't know what you asked me. But _maybe_ you'll hear something that will throw some light on the subject."

"Thank you very much," said the Babe.

"There were only two young ones in the nest," said Uncle Andy, in his sometimes irrelevant way, which seemed deliberately designed to make the Babe ask questions. "The nest was a big, untidy structure of sticks and dead branches; but it was strongly woven for all its untidiness, because it had to stand against the great winds sweeping down over the Ridge. Inside it was very nicely and softly lined with dry gra.s.s, and some horse-hair, and a piece of yellow silk from the lining of what had once been a ruffle or something like that that women wear. The nest was in a tall pine, which stood at one end of a grove of ancient fir trees overlooking a slope of pasture and an old white farmhouse with a big garden behind it. Nearly all the trees had crows'

nests in their tops, but in most of the other nests there were three or four young crows."