Et of yellow, husked corn. The three big brothers were in the attic overhead, huddled

Bled miserably along. But just as she flung herself down beside the
whip, there came a harsh call from behind her, where the lunch-pail
stood. It was the cowbird. "Look-see! look-see!" he cried,
pecking at the brown paper that held the gingerbread. Jumping up, the
little girl ran to him and caught him tenderly
to her breast. He was so inquisitive that he soon became unpopular at
the farm-house, and on several occasions all but had his neck wrung for
wrongdoing. One day he picked the eldest
brother's fiddle-strings in two; another time he was discovered digging
holes in the newly baked loaves of bread that had been set in a window
to cool; and, again, he
stole hot potatoes out of a kettle on the
kitchen stove. But whenever danger threatened, the little girl
championed
him valiantly. So time after time he escaped merited punishment, which
was to have
been not less than death or exile; for he was too small to whip.

But one morning in the early
fall he was confronted with a very grave charge--one that was, if
proved true, to cost
him his life or his home: the little girl's mother, on going into the
kitchen at sunrise to prepare breakfast, discovered all her crocks of
milk disturbed and the shelf behind the stove, on which they stood in a
long, yellow row, spattered with milk from end to end. As she turned,
very puzzled, from the shelf to the table, she saw the cowbird gravely
walking about on the white oil-cloth. "Look-see! look-see!" he cried to
her, flirting his tail and blinking his eyes. "Look-see! look-see!" She
ran to the table and seized
him angrily in her hands, certain that he had forsaken his own little
pan of water to bathe in the milk. But when she had looked
him over carefully, and found him dry and tidy from top to toe, she let
him go again,
forgetting to feel of the white oil-cloth upon which he had been
promenading, and which was spattered with milk like the shelf. Before
the contents of the crocks
were thrown out that morning, the little girl's mother called all of
the big brothers

in to view the mess; and by the time breakfast was over, the cowbird
had been passed
around, for every on