"What is it for then?" asked Bert.
"It's for snarin' birds. I've seen 'em before. Men spread the nets out on the grass, and over bushes near where the birds come to feed, and when they try to fly they get caught and tangled in the meshes. I guess this net ain't been here very long, for there ain't any birds caught in it."
"But who put it here?" asked Mrs. Bobbsey. "I think it's a shame to catch the poor birds that way. Who did it?"
Tom looked carefully around before he answered. Then he said:
"I think it was the gypsies."
"The gypsies!" cried Bert.
"Yes. They're a shiftless lot. They don't work and they take what don't belong to 'em. They're too lazy to hunt with a gun, so they snare birds in a net. Why, they'll even eat sparrows—make a pie of 'em my mother says. And when they get robins and blackbirds they're so much bigger they can broil 'em over their fires. This is a bird-net, that's what it is."
"I believe you're right," said Mrs. Bobbsey, when she had looked more closely at it. "It isn't the kind they use in fishing. But do you really think the gypsies put it here, Tom?"
"Yes'm, I really do. They put 'em here other years, though I never seen one before. You see the gypsies sometimes camp here and sometimes on the mainland. All they have to do is to spread their net, and go away. When they come back next day there's generally a lot of birds caught in it and they take 'em out and eat 'em."
"Well, they caught a queer kind of bird this time," said Bert, with a smile at his little sister. "And it didn't do their net any good," he added, as he looked at the cut meshes.