TOM BROWN'S
him a word of anything bad, or keep him from his lessons. What luck!" And so, with more than his usual heartiness, he dived into his cupboard, and hauled out an old knuckle-bone of ham, and two or three bottles of beer, together with the solemn pewter only used on state occasions; while Arthur, equally elated at the easy accomplishment of his first act of volition in the joint establishment, produced from his side a bottle of pickles and a pot of jam, and cleared the table. In a minute or two the noise of the boys coming up from supper was heard, and Martin knocked and was admitted, bearing his bread and cheese, and the three fell to with hearty good-will upon the viands, talking faster than they ate, for all shyness disappeared in a moment before Tom's bottled beer and hospitable ways. "Here's Arthur, a regular young town mouse, with a natural taste for the woods, Martin, longing to break his neck climbing trees, and with a passion for young snakes."
"Well, I say," sputtered out Martin, eagerly, "will you come to-morrow, both of you, to Caldecott's Spinney, then, for I know of a kestrel's nest, up a fir-tree—I can't get at it without help; and. Brown, you can climb against any one."
"Oh yes, do let us go," said Arthur; "I never saw a hawk's nest, nor a hawk's egg."
"You just come down to my study, then, and I'll show you five sorts," said Martin.
"Ay, the old Madman has got the best collection in the house, out-and-out," said Tom; and then Martin, warming with unaccustomed good cheer and the chance of a convert, launched into a proposed birds'-nesting campaign, betraying all manner of important secrets; a golden-crested wren's nest near Butlin's Mound, a moor-hen that was sitting on nine eggs in a pond down the Barby road, and a kingfisher's nest in a corner of the old canal above Brownsover Mill. He had heard, he said, that no one had ever got a kingfisher's nest out perfect, and that the British Museum, or the government, or somebody, had offered
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