"What will you give him?" asked the titlark.
"He is lying at this moment on the trefoil that commands all metals. Let him look to his gun when he awakes."
"Ah!" said the titlark, "I told you that secret. I was with Teague the Smith when he discovered it.…But he discovered it too late; and, besides, he was a dreamer, and used it only to make crosses and charms and womanish ornaments."
"It's no use to us, anyhow," said the practical wren. "So let us give it away. I hate waste."
"I doubt," said the titlark, "it will be much profit to him, wonderful though it is."
"Well," said the wren, "a present's a present. Folks with a living to get must give what they can afford."
It is not wise, as a rule, to sleep on the bare ground in December. But Young John awoke warm and jolly as a sandboy. He picked up his gun. It was bent and curiously twisted in the barrel. "Hallo!" said he, and peered closely into the short turf where it had lain. . . .
When he reached home his mother cried out joyfully, seeing his game-bag and how it bulged. She cried out to a different tune when he showed her what it contained—clods and clumps of turf, matted over with a tiny close-growing plant that might have been any common moss for aught she knew (or recked) of the difference.
"But where are all the birds you promised me?"
He held out his gun—he had promised no birds, but that mattered nothing. His father took it to the lamp and glanced at it; put on his horn spectacles slowly, and peered at it. He was silent for a long while. Young John had turned inattentively from his mother's reproaches, and stood watching him.