"I got real angry at last, and said I wouldn't have any thing to do with such wicked, cruel boys. I started to run away, when they saw Deacon Myers driving his cow to the pasture, and they sneaked off about the quickest. After they had gone, I picked up the nest and this poor bird from the ground."
"Let me see it," said Mr. Symmes, holding out his hand; "and you sit down and eat your breakfast."
He left the room immediately, carrying the sparrow with him. Presently Annie came back with tears in her eyes, saying her father had killed it, to put it out of pain.
"I was afraid it couldn't live," rejoined Fred. "Ugly boys! I am glad they don't know of our robins' nest."
"Such cruelty always meets with its punishment," remarked grandpa. "I myself knew a man who, when a boy, delighted to rob birds' nests. Sometimes he stole the eggs, and sometimes he waited until they were hatched, that he might have the greater fun. Then he took the poor, helpless, unoffending things, and dug out their eyes, to see how awkwardly they would hop around."
"Shocking!" exclaimed Mrs. Symmes.
"He ought to have been hung!" shouted Fred.
Annie pressed both hands over her eyes, and turned very pale.
"Well," resumed grandpa, "he grew to be a man, was married and settled in life; and now came God's time to punish him. He had one child after another until they numbered five. Three of them, two daughters and one son, were born stone blind.
"He was a man coarse and rough in his feelings, as a cruel man will always be; but this affliction cut him to the heart, and when it was announced to him that the third child would never open its eyes to the light of the sun, he threw up his arms and cried aloud, 'O God, have mercy on me, though I had none on the poor birds!'