The Butterfly Man watched him for a moment in silence; a furrow came to his forehead.

“Damn little thief!” he muttered.  “And you don’t even have to care!  No!  It’s not right.  There ought to be some way to save the mothers and the nests from your sort—­without having to kill you, either.  But good Lord, how?  That’s what I want to know!”

“Beat ’em to it and stand ’em off,” said Laurence, staring at the ravaged nest, the unhappy mother, the gorged impenitent thief. “’Git thar fustest with the mostest men.’  Have the nests so protected the thief can’t get in without getting caught.  Build Better Bird Houses, say, and enforce a Law of the Garden—­Boom and Food for all, Pillage for None.  You’d have to expect some spoiled nests, of course, for you couldn’t be on guard all the time, and you couldn’t make all the birds live in your Better Bird Houses—­they wouldn’t know how.  But you’d save some of them, at any rate.”

“Think so?” said John Flint.  “Huh!  And what’d you do with him?” And he jerked his head at the screaming jay.

“Let him alone, so long as he behaved.  Shoo him outside when he didn’t—­and see that he kept outside,” said Laurence.  “You see, the idea isn’t so much to reform bluejays—­it’s to save the other birds from them.”

John Flint’s face was troubled.  “It’s all a muddle, anyhow,” said he.  “You can’t blame the bluejay, because he was born so, and it’s bluejay nature to act like that when it gets the chance.  But there’s the other bird—­it looks bad.  It is bad.  For a thief to come into a little nest like that, that she’d been brooding on, and twittering to, and feeling so good and so happy about—­Man, I’d have given a month’s work and pay to have saved that nest!  It’s not fair.  God!  Isn’t there some way to save the good ones from the bad ones?”

There he stood, in the middle of the path, staring ruefully at the wrecked bit of twigs and moss and down that had been a wee home; and with more of sorrow than anger at the feathered crook who had done the damage.  The thing was slight in itself, and more than common—­just one of the unrecorded humble tragedies which daily engulf the Little Peoples.  But I had seen a butterfly’s wing save him alive; and so I did not doubt now that a little bird’s nest could weigh down the balance which would put him definitely upon the side of good and of God.

“I think there is a way,” said Laurence, gravely, “and that is to beat them to it and stand them off.  All the rest is talk and piffle—­the only way to save is to save.  There are no halfway measures; also, it’s a lifetime job, full of kicks and cuffs and ingratitude and misunderstanding and failure and loneliness, and sometimes even worse things yet.  But you do manage to sometimes save the nests and the fledglings, and you do sometimes escape the pain of hearing the mothers lamenting.  And that’s the only reward a decent mortal ought to hope for.  I reckon it’s about the best reward there is, this side of heaven.”