pleased to learn how he had been cajoled. "I'll look out for you next time!"

"His father and I have wished to give him an education; and though we are not rich, we would cheerfully have made any sacrifices to send him to college and prepare him for a profession. But he hates study. Oh! when I think of the difference between him and some boys I know, who are striving for an education against the greatest obstacles, while he is throwing away his opportunities, it makes me

"What is she crying for?" Gaspar said to himself, in the painful interval of silence which followed. "We should be willing for him to leave school," she resumed presently, "if there were any other useful thing he would apply himself to. But he thinks he 's cruelly misused if we even require him to take care of the horse, or split a little kindlingwood. It is, in fact, so great a trial to get anything of that kind done, that his father would never ask it of him if it were not a still greater trial to see him idle. That he is a minister's son, makes the matter seem worse than if he belonged to anybody else; so much is expected of a minister's family! But he appears to have no regard for his father's position; and, indeed, but very little respect for him, anyway."

The school-master did not reply for a moment. "Guess he don't care to take that contract," thought Gaspar, remembering his recent surly behavior to the visitor. "He'll think that I'm too bad to try to do anything with, and I can't blame him." So he hardened his heart, although, for some reason, he felt now that he would a little rather have the good opinion of old Pickerel.

"What sort of persons are his associates?" the teacher asked, after a pause.

"Just such as you might suppose,- the most idle and reckless boys in the neighborhood. There is Pete Cheevy, perhaps the worst of them all. Scarce a day passes but he and our boy are off together robbing birds' nests, or killing the poor little birds."

66

"I have observed them together," said the visitor; and I must confess that I have wondered to see your son keeping such company."

"We have tried to prevent it," rejoined the mother; "and we have tried to prevent this warfare on the birds. But Gaspar has a gun --an oldfashioned fowling-piece that his uncle gave him; he even feels hard toward us, because his father will not buy him a breech-loader ! He says that we oppose him in everything. Whereas, mercy knows, we have been too indulgent. He is an only son; he was our idol in his babyhood— all our hopes cen

"He is a very poor scholar. But it is n't the fault of his ability. I never saw a child so quick to learn, when he once gives his mind to anything. But his object in school seems to have been to have all the fun he could, while studying just enough to pass his examinations, and not get left by his class. Not one of his teachers has seemed able to get at the right side of him; and I know he has worked against them in every way he could." Evidently they have not understood him," said the school-master.

"How could they be expected to understand him, when I, his own mother, can not?" said the woman, despondently. "Oh, what would I not give to find the right chord to touch in his nature, and know just how to reach it! There must be such a chord,— he is so bright, so ingenious, so ready to help almost anybody but his own family and friends!"

Gaspar scowled harder than ever, and his breath came thickly. He wished his mother would not talk in that way!

"You see, now," she went on, "why we have sent for you. We need your advice and help. We are very anxious that he should enter at your school the next term; and I thought that, perhaps, if you could talk with him, knowing something of his peculiar disposition to begin with, you might have some influence over him."

And Gaspar, under the window, could distinctly hear his mother's sobs.

"I am sure there must be some way of reaching his better nature," said Mr. Pike. "But I see he is suspicious of me; thinking, no doubt, that because I am a school-master I must be plotting against his liberty. I will help you, if I can, Mrs. Heth; but it is possible that it will not be best for him to enter the high school; and, if so, for his own good we should wish to know it."

"He's a level-headed old Pick, anyway!" thought Gaspar, under the window.

"It is n't always wise to oppose such a boy in everything," the visitor went on. "But if we can discover the bent of his genius, and what he wishes most at heart, we may, perhaps, direct him in the right way, not by damming the stream, but by turning it into a proper channel."

His voice sounded as if he was rising to go, and the boy made haste to get away from the window.

CHAPTER II.

A TALK ABOUT BIRDS.

WHEN Mr. Pike came out of the house, a few minutes later, he saw Gaspar Heth sitting on the grass where he had left him, with the little raw, red body of the bird on the shingle beside him,

"A high-hole," said Gaspar. "Well!" Mr. Pike answered good-humoredly, "that leaves me as ignorant as I was before. What is a high-hole?"

Gaspar laughed. It was fun to puzzle old Pickerel, and he wished some boys that he knew were there to witness his triumph.

"It's a yellow-hammer," he replied. "Now you know."

"Now I don't know; in fact, I know less than I did before," said the master. "For, if I am not mistaken, the yellow-hammer is a European species; we have no yellow-hammer in this country.'

This bit of bird-knowledge took the gleeful Gaspar by surprise. He did not respect old Pick any the less for it, however.

"You are not mistaken," he said. "We have no true yellow-hammer. But that is one of the common names this bird goes by. It is called a flicker, too, I suppose, on account of the flashing yellow of its wings when it flies; and a high-hole, from the holes it makes for its nest in the trunks of trees."

"Now I know the bird," replied the schoolmaster; "as I think I should have done at first, if I had seen it on the wing. It is the pigeonwoodpecker, or golden-winged woodpecker, or golden-shafted woodpecker; it seems to have a great many names."

sort of picus, that being the Latin name for woodpecker."

"That's it," cried Gaspar, growing more and more animated. "Though I have always called it pick-us, because it picks the trees."

"A very natural mistake," said the schoolmaster. "But the i has the long sound; and the word is not related to our word pick at all. This picus must have some other Latin word to qualify it, and show what particular species it is. Do you remember it?"

"Auretus; pickus auretus, or something like that."

The master smiled again.

"Not au retus, but aura'tus, my boy, with the accent on the long a of the second syllable; picus aura'tus. That is, woodpecker decked with gold; and a very good name it is. I am not surprised that you did not get it quite right; on the contrary, I am surprised that you should have observed and remembered the Latin name at all."

"There's a book about birds in the public library; in looking it over, I've noticed that all the woodpeckers are called picus,—which I thought meant pickers, and then I could n't help wondering what some of the other words meant. I have asked myself what auratus stood for, a good many times; and now I am glad that I know it means 'decked with gold.' But I can't see the use of giving Latin and Greek names to birds and things, nowadays."

Perhaps I can explain it to you," said the master. "Take this bird, for instance. We have seen that it has several common names; one of which, certainly, belongs to another bird. So, if a person speaks of a yellow-hammer, how are you to know whether he means this or the European species? In ordinary conversation you may think that is not very important; but in all scientific descriptions, it is necessary that such names shall be used as can not be misunderstood."

"But why can't men of science agree upon English names?" the boy inquired.

"That is a sensible question. The answer to it is that all men of science are not Englishspeaking people. There are German, French,

"I am humiliated now!" said the teacher, with a humorous, rueful smile. "I pretend to teach Latin, and yet I don't know the Latin name for this bird! though, I suppose, it must be some

a Dutch name. It really seems much simpler and more convenient to use Latin and Greek names, which learned men in all countries agree upon and understand; so that a German man of science will know just what a Spanish man of science is

writing about, if he uses correct scientific terms. Now, take the case of this very bird. A Swedish naturalist, named Linnæus, who was a great botanist, and classified and gave scientific names to plants, also gave names to many birds to this species, I suppose, among others; so that, when picus auratus is alluded to by any writer in any language, ornithologists know just what bird is meant. So, you see, these scientific terms that you dislike form a sort of universal language understood by men of science the world over."

"Can't a person be a good ornithologist without knowing Latin and Greek?" Gaspar inquired.

"Oh, yes; but he will find it very useful indeed to know those languages, especially as some species of birds have more than one scientific name, given them by more than one writer on the subject. To know at least the rudiments of Greek and Latin will be a great help to him; and these can be acquired without very severe study. But, after all," the master continued, seeing the boy's countenance fall, "to know a thing itself is of much greater importance than to know fifty different names for it, be they ever so scientific. I suppose you have learned a great deal about this bird, its characteristics of form and color, its habits, its food, and its eggs."

"I know all that," said Gaspar, brightening again. "I have its eggs, and they are beauties! Six of them, pure white, about an inch long. I got them myself, by hard digging with a knife, out of a hole in a tree as long as my arm I mean the hole, not the tree."

"But did n't you feel a little sorry to take away the eggs from the mother bird?" Mr. Pike ventured to say, watching the boy's face carefully.

“I should have felt worse if I had n't known she would keep right on and lay more, and hatch her brood just the same, only somewhat later. I wanted the eggs for my collection."

"Have you a collection? I should like to see it." "Would you?" said Gaspar. "Well, I'd like to show it to you, if you wont mind the looks of my room. I am scolded every day in the year for the litter I keep it in, but I don't see what harm it does. I'll show you my collection of bird-skins, too, if you like." And, as the master replied that he would like that, too, very much, Gaspar led the way into the house.

CHAPTER III.

GASPAR'S COLLECTIONS.

MRS. HETH had watched with anxious interest the school-master and her wayward son talking together in the yard; but it was not without a feel

"Show my collections," said Gaspar, stiffly. "He wont care for your collections, and, you know, you keep your room in such a state that I am positively ashamed to have it seen, remonstrated the mother.

"Excuse me, I have been in boys' rooms before," replied the master, "and I have a real desire to see his collections."

With a face full of apprehension and distress, the good woman drew back into the sitting-room, thankful that she had at least prepared him for the untidy appearance of things, which the most careful and conscientious housekeeping could not permanently remedy.

Owing, perhaps, to that forewarning, Mr. Pike, on entering the chamber, did not appear to notice at all the oil-spots on the wall-paper, the scattered feathers and bits of cotton-wool and sticks and leaves on the carpet, clothing and shoes flung about, some loose matches on the bed, and a hammer and a handful of nails on a chair. He did not mean to be surprised at anything; and he was, perhaps, all the more surprised for that reason.

Gaspar began to open his bureau drawers, the contents of which accounted for a tumbled heap of shirts and socks, thrust into a box, which peeped out from under the bed; all his wearing apparel having been removed to make space for the things, which, in his eyes, were of vastly greater importance. These were his collections; and it was the order and beauty displayed in their arrangement, contrasted with the great disorder of the room, which surprised the master.

There were eggs of various sizes, from those of the osprey and the great horned-owl down to those of the humming-bird and the smallest wren. The larger eggs were laid side by side in open pasteboard boxes. "For, of course, I could n't bring home a night-heron's nest, or a fish-hawk's nest," Gaspar explained. "Guess such rafts of sticks and limbs would be too much, even for my room!" Some of the smaller eggs, also, were in boxes. "For it happens, sometimes, that two or three of us will discover a rare nest, and, of course, only one can have it; but we can share the eggs, if it has more than one."

Most of the eggs, however, were in their native nests, which were arranged with neatness and taste. These were of a great variety of size and structure, from that of the ruby-throated humming-bird, so diminutive and dainty,-(a soft bunch of the gathered down of plants, having delicately colored

built of twigs and leaves and moss,-the black billed cuckoo's,-which I found myself."

The master examined the nest, but did not appear quite convinced.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

'Yonder masterful cuckoo

"Emerson says:

Crowds every egg out of the nest, Quick or dead, except its own.'

"And by yonder cuckoo,' an American writer could hardly have meant a bird across the ocean, if he knew what he was talking about, as Emerson generally did."

"But he did n't, if he was talking about our native cuckoos," Gaspar declared confidently.

The school-master smiled to see this black-eyed boy brush aside the words of the Concord philosopher with a disdainful gesture. Gaspar went on: "I've watched the birds ever so many times; and don't I know? The cow-bunting is the rogue! I saw the bird go to this sparrow's nest, when there were two sparrow eggs in it, and it left that third egg. But it did n't crowd out the others; it left its own to be hatched with them, and the young bird to be taken care of by the sparrow, along with her own young. But what did the sparrow do? She saw that it was a strange egg, but did n't know how to get rid of it; so she set to work with her mate to build the upper story of the nest, and got it ready in time to lay her next egg in it. But they had done their work in too great a hurry; it was open to criticism, as you see. So they abandoned it, and I took it for my collection." "It is very curious!" said the master. Three drawers contained the nests and eggs. Gaspar opened a fourth, in which were displayed the smallest of his bird-skins. Each had the beak and claws attached, and was wrapped about a slender artificial body of cotton-wool, and laid on its back. The different specimens of a species — the male and female and young- - were ranged side by side; those of the species nearest akin were placed next; and so on, through each family, sub-family, and order. It was a wonderful sight; all were so beautiful, all so still; not like dead birds, but rather like birds in a trance or sleep. The larger birds were ranged in like manner in broad pasteboard boxes.

"Do you know all these species and their eggs?" the master inquired.

"Oh, of course!" said Gaspar carelessly. "It took me a long while to learn all the warblers and their eggs; for there are a great many of them, and some are very much alike. These are the warblers," he added, spreading his hands over a row of the smaller birds; "the chestnut-sided, the blue yellow-backed, the blue-winged yellow, the

blackpoll, the black-throated blue, the Cape May, the yellow-rumped, the”

"Never mind about the rest!" exclaimed the master. "I am surprised that you should have studied and collected so many specimens."

"The only way to study them is to collect them," replied Gaspar. "Now, some folks are interested in books. But what I am interested in is birds."

"You should be a naturalist," observed the

master.

"Oh! that's what I should like to be!" said the boy, his dark features glowing with enthusiasm. "But, no,- my folks want to make something else of me. They think the time I spend studying birds is time thrown away.' I am 'idling'; and I am a 'cruel wretch' because I take eggs and nests."

"But do you not think, yourself, that it is a great pity to destroy so many eggs and birds?” asked the master. "You have a beautiful display here; but do you know what struck me at first? Not the beauty, but the pity of it! I am glad I have seen it, for now I know there is another side to the question than that of wanton destruction and cruelty."

"Wanton destruction and cruelty!" cried Gaspar, his black eyes flashing. "I never take a bird nor an egg that I don't need to complete my collection. I only get my share, and hardly that. If you could see the host of real enemies one of these little sparrows has to dodge and hide away from before she can make a nest and raise her brood! minks and snakes, and red squirrels, and weasels, and hawks, and jays, and butcher-birds, and owls, and cats, and

"And young collectors," put in the master, in a quiet tone.

"I own," said Gaspar, "that they are about the worst enemies that birds have, after all! I don't mean the real collectors, for I believe they are the birds' best friends."

"I think the true ornithologist is a friend to the birds, as he must be their lover," the master admitted. "But you know, Gaspar, as well as I do, that 'collecting' is a mania with boys; innocent enough when confined to autographs and postagestamps, but harmful when it leads to the destruction of living creatures, with no noble end in view. How many boys do you know who have begun collections of birds and eggs that will never have the least scientific value, but will be neglected and flung out-of-doors in a year or two?”

How many? lots of them!" Gaspar answered, frankly." But I am not one of 'em." "You go with them, however?" "Yes, I go with them sometimes, for their