“A fly-ketcher,” said Archie B. calmly, “is a sneaking sort of a bird, that ketches flies an' little helpless insects for a—mill, maybe. Do you know any two-legged fly-ketchers a-doin' that?”
Jud glared at him, and Bonaparte grew so angry that he snapped viciously at the bark of the tree as if he would tear it down.
“What do you mean, you little imp?—what mill?”
“Why his stomach,” drawled Archie B., “it's a little differunt from a cotton-mill, but it grinds 'em to death all the same.”
Jud looked up again. He glared at Archie B.
“How do you know that's a fly-ketcher's nest and not a wood-pecker's, then?” he asked, to change the subject.
“That's what I'd like to know, too,” said Bonaparte as plainly as his growls and two mean eyes could say it.
“If it's a fly-ketcher's, the nest will be lined with a snake's-skin,” said Archie B. “That's nachrul, ain't it,” he added—“the nest of all sech is lined with snake-skins.”
Bonaparte, one of whose chief amusements in life was killing snakes, seemed to think this a personal thrust at himself, for he flew around the tree with renewed rage while Archie B., safe on his high perch, made faces at him and laughed.
“I'll bet it ain't that way,” said Jud, rattled and discomfited and shifting his long squirrel gun across his saddle. Archie B. replied by carefully thrusting a brown sunburnt arm into the hole and bringing out a nest. “Now, a wood-pecker's egg,” he said, carefully lifting an egg out and then replacing it, “'ud be pearly white.”