"But when they were big enough for their weight to be a serious
interference with their mother's hunting, then she was forced, most
reluctantly, to leave them at home sometimes. She would take them both
together into the narrow crevice between the top beam and the slope of
the roof, and there they would lie motionless, shrouded in their
exquisitely fine, mouse-colored wing membranes, and looking for all the
world like two little bits of dry wood. It was not always lonely for
them, because there were usually at least two or three grown-up bats
hanging by their toes from the edge of a nearby crack, taking brief
rest from the toil of their aerial chase. But it was always
monotonous, unless they were asleep. For all movement was rigorously
forbidden them, as being liable to betray them to some foe."
"Why, what could get at them, away up there?" demanded the Child, to
whom the peak of a lead always seemed the remotest, most inaccessible,
and most mysterious of spots.
"Wait and see!" answered Uncle Andy, with the air of an oracle. "Well,
one night a streak of moonlight, like a long white finger, came in
through a crack above and lit up those two tiny huddled shapes in their
crevice.
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