“Well,” said he, quite pleased to see them, “so the wind has blown you back to me.”
They sat under a big tree in the yard and told him all that had happened to them. When they finished, their father said, “Now I will put your accomplishments to the test, and see what you can do.”
He looked up into the tree and said to his second son: “There is a chaffinch’s nest up there on the topmost branch. Tell me how many eggs there are in it.”
The star-gazer took his telescope, looked through it, and said, “There are five.”
“Fetch the eggs down,” said the father to his eldest son, “and be careful not to disturb the mother bird, who is sitting on them.”
The cunning thief climbed the tree, and removed the five eggs from underneath the bird so deftly that she never noticed what he had done, and he brought them down to his father. The father took them and put one on each corner of a table, and the fifth in the middle, and said to the huntsman, “You must cut all those eggs in half at one shot.”
The huntsman aimed and divided each egg in half at one shot, as his father desired. He certainly must have had some of the powder that shoots round a corner. The eggs had little birds in them, and the neck of each had been severed by the bullet.
“Now it is your turn,” said the father to the fourth son. “I expect you to sew the birds and the shells together so they will be none the worse for that shot.”
The tailor produced his needle, and stitched away as his father had desired. When he finished the task, the thief climbed the tree with the eggs, and put them back under the bird without her perceiving him. The bird continued to sit on the eggs, and a few days later the fledgelings crept out of the shells. Each had a red streak round its neck where the tailor had sewn them together, but were none the worse otherwise.
“I can certainly praise your skill,” said the father to his sons. “You have used your time well while you have been away, and you have all acquired very useful knowledge.”