Just before lunch Austin snatched a few minutes to run out and gossip with Lubin on the lawn.

Lubin listened with keen interest to the boy's picturesque account of his experiences, and then remarked, sagely nodding his head: "I told you to be on the look-out, you know, Master Austin.

Magpies don't perch on folks' window-sills for nothing.

You'll believe me a little quicker next time, maybe." For once in his life Austin could think of nothing to say in reply.

To ask Lubin to explain the connection between magpies and misadventures would have been useless; it evidently sufficed for him that such was the order of Nature, and only a magpie would have been able to clear up the mystery.