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T was in the very heart of the ancient wood—the forest primeval of the north, gloomy with the dark-green, crowded ranks of fir and spruce and hemlock, and tangled with the huge windfalls of countless storm-torn winters. But now, at high noon of the glowing northern summer, the gloom was pierced to its depths with shafts of radiant sun; the barred and checkered transparent brown shadows hummed with dancing flies; the warm air was alive with the small, thin notes of chick-a-dee and nuthatch, varied now and then by the impertinent scolding of the Canada jay; and the drowsing tree tops steamed up an incense of balsamy fragrance in the heat. The ancient wildness dreamed, stretched itself all open to the sun, and seemed to sigh with immeasurable content.

High up in the grey trunk of a half-dead forest giant was a round hole, the entrance to what had been the nest of a pair of big, red-headed, golden