Donald and Gillis, sitting near the bluff enjoying a smoke came to their feet as they heard a faint shout from above. For an interval they listened intently, but hearing no further sound they resumed their seats. Andy slackened his pace as he came to the clearing and saw that Connie was unharmed. She was standing near the labourer with her head bowed over an object held in her hand.
“What’s wrong, Connie?” panted Andy.
“Andy, look!” she choked, “it’s the mother bird. I had just found her nest—here it is.” She parted the bushes to disclose a compact, cosy, cup-like structure of fine grass and moss placed in a crotch of the tree. In the centre lay four downy fledglings whose tiny mouths gaped wide to receive the expected bit of food from the mother’s bill. “Oh, Andy, if she dies the little ones won’t live,” said Connie in a voice filled with pity.
Andy took the wounded bird from her hand. “ ’Ow did it ’appen, Connie?” he asked tenderly.
Connie was as open and unaffected as the wild birds of the forest. She was as capable of hating as she was of loving. Her eyes were laughing eyes, and the soul that looked out of them a merry soul, but she had a temper, and under sufficient provocation her blue eyes could take on a dangerous glow.
She now turned like an enraged lioness on the foreigner. “He killed it with a stick!” she cried furiously. “You brute, you cowardly brute. . . .” In her rage her voice became incoherent. With hands clenched and with breath coming in short gasps, she moved nearer to the object of her hatred. In her hysterical anger her voice rose almost to a scream.
“You cur, if I were a man I’d—I’d lick you!”
The cry came to Donald’s ears, and he was off up the trail like a deer.
“Something wrong, Jack!” he shouted.
“Go ahead, I’ll follow,” responded Gillis.