So Leon received the nest of little young robins, and took it safely back to the old oak tree in the forest. He stopped on the way to dig some worms, with which he fed his little feathered friends, who were getting quite clamorous with hunger. When he had fixed the nest securely in its old place, he hid himself in a clump of bushes near by, to watch for the coming of the old birds. All the afternoon he watched and waited, and still they did not come.
At last, when it was almost twilight—the time for flowers and little birds to go to sleep, he saw the two robins—he was sure they were the same birds—come slowly winging their way towards the oak. It seemed they could not sleep away from their home, although it had been made so desolate. The male bird flew in among the upper branches, and perched on one of them; but the female bird stopped in a tree near by. It appeared that she was hardly equal to the sight of the dear old place.
Soon Leon saw the male bird flutter on his perch, and turn his head quickly this way and that. He had heard those little complaining voices chirping below him!—then he darted downward and hovered over the nest a moment, to be sure they were all there, then flew to his mate, to tell her the glad news. In another moment, they were both back by the nest, hopping and hovering about it—chirping joyfully and lovingly in answer to the eager little chirps of their young ones. Late as it was, they flew about, and got up a nice little supper of worms for their darlings. After that, while the mother-bird spread over them her soft warm wings, and hushed them to sleep with the happy beating of her heart, the father bird flew up to a branch above them, and burst into a glad, delicious song.
"He is thanking God," said Leon softly to himself, reverently taking off his little cap, and making the sign of the cross—"he is thanking God."
[The Story of Grace Darling.]
On the lonely little island of Brownsman, one of the Farne group, on the coast of Northumberland, England, lived William Darling, lighthouse keeper, a brave, honest, intelligent man. Grace, his daughter, the youngest of seven children, was courageous like her father, good and gentle like her mother. She was a quiet, modest girl, with a slender form, a beautiful face, and the sweetest smile in the world.
The Farne Islands are very wild and desolate, being little better than piles of black rocks towering above the dismal, roaring seas of that stormy and perilous coast. In calm weather they are surrounded by a fringe of white surf, and in times of storm they are almost overwhelmed by the great, raging surges. Through the channels between these islands the sea rushes like swollen torrents; and here, before beacons were built upon the rocks, occurred many shipwrecks. Even now they are very dangerous spots, for in spite of those friendly lights glimmering through the blackness of the tempest and the night, the force of the gale will sometimes drive vessels headlong upon the rocks, dash them to pieces, and scatter them over the boiling deep.
The Brownsman was the outermost of the Farne Islands—the last rocky foothold of human life; and beyond it was a vast expanse and an awful depth of sea. It had scarcely any vegetation, but stood out from the water, bare and black and bleak. The jagged cliffs, and dim, sounding caves, were alive with seabirds—almost the only living creatures to be seen on the island, out of the family at the lighthouse.