The Case Of The Perjured Parrot

Here he would sit on the porch by the hour with a pair of powerful binoculars in his hand, watching the birds, making friends with the chipmunks and squirrels, reading books – asking only to be let alone.
Just touching sixty, he represented a strange figure of a man; one who had wrung from life all that it offered in the way of material success; a man who literally had more money than he knew what to do with. Some of this money he had established in trust funds, but for the most part he did not believe in philanthropy, thinking that the ultimate purpose of life was to develop character; that the mote a person came to depend on outside assistance, the more his character was weakened.

Of late he had been spending much of his time in a mountain cabin, on the pine-clad slope of a rugged range near a brawling stream.