The older was
teaching the younger how to shoot. A robin, a chipmunk, and two or
three sparrows were already stowed away in their jacket pockets; a
brown rabbit hung from the older boy's shoulder. Suddenly the younger
raised his bow and drew the arrow back to its head. Just in front a
chickadee hung and twittered among the birch twigs. But the older boy
seized his arm.
"Don't shoot--don't shoot him!" he said.
"But why not?"
"'Cause you mustn't--you must never kill a chickadee."
And the younger, influenced more by a certain mysterious shake of the
head than by the words, slacked his bow cheerfully; and with a last
wide-eyed look at the little gray bird that twittered and swung so
fearlessly near them, the two boys went on with their hunting.
No one ever taught the older boy to discriminate between a chickadee
and other birds; no one else ever instructed the younger. Yet somehow
both felt, and still feel after many years, that there is a
difference. It is always so with boys. They are friends of whatever
trusts them and is fearless. Chickadee's own personality, his cheery
ways and trustful nature had taught them, though they knew it not. And
among all the boys of that neighborhood there is still a law, which no
man gave, of which no man knows the origin, a law as unalterable as
that of the Medes and Persians: _Never kill a chickadee_.
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