“Andy, look!” she choked, “it’s the mother bird. I had just found her nest—here it is.” She parted the bushes to disclose a compact, cosy, cup-like structure of fine grass and moss placed in a crotch of the tree. In the centre lay four downy fledglings whose tiny mouths gaped wide to receive the expected bit of food from the mother’s bill. “Oh, Andy, if she dies the little ones won’t live,” said Connie in a voice filled with pity.
Andy took the wounded bird from her hand. “’Ow did it ’appen, Connie?” he asked tenderly.
Connie was as open and unaffected as the wild birds of the forest. She was as capable of hating as she was of loving. Her eyes were laughing eyes, and the soul that looked out of them a merry soul, but she had a temper, and under sufficient provocation her blue eyes could take on a dangerous glow.
She now turned like an enraged lioness on the foreigner. “He killed it with a stick!” she cried furiously. “You brute, you cowardly brute. . . .” In her rage her voice became incoherent. With hands clenched and with breath coming in short gasps, she moved nearer to the object of her hatred. In her hysterical anger her voice rose almost to a scream.
“You cur, if I were a man I’d—I’d lick you!”
The cry came to Donald’s ears, and he was off up the trail like a deer.
“Go ahead, I’ll follow,” responded Gillis.
Andy looked down on the mother goldfinch as it lay in his hand. He felt the quick throbbing of its heart grow fainter and fainter. One wing was broken and its white breast was stained with blood. The bird’s head drooped lower, and a film settled over its bright eyes. The beautiful wings stretched rigidly, and it gasped convulsively, sending a tiny stain of crimson from its mouth that felt warm on his palm.
Andy’s face became colourless. His hand shook violently as he placed the dead bird tenderly on the ground. “Connie dear,” he said, in a voice that trembled, “I ain’t a whole man, but ’ere’s where you see ’arf a man goin’ into battle to give all he’s got.”
He removed his coat and threw it from him. Through a rage-mist Andy saw the grinning foreigner throw up his arms in an absurdly unscientific posture of defence. Like a mad cat, Andy launched himself straight at his husky opponent. The grin was wiped from the big man’s face by Andy’s compact fist, as it smacked resonantly on the end of his thick nose with a snap like that of a whip, and with a skilled force that brought blood.