Why was Sylvia's decision to not reveal the white heron's location difficult?

Sylvia is torn between protecting the white heron and gaining materially by betraying it. Revealing its whereabouts would also please the young man who wants to shoot and stuff it.

First, as the story reveals, Sylvia and her grandmother "are poor now." The ten dollars the young man offers for the bird, an amount then worth far more than today, would be a windfall for them, making them feel "rich." At bed in night, Sylvia can scarcely calculate all the things ten dollars could buy.

Further, though she says she would like him better without his gun, Sylvia is "charmed" by the man who wants to stuff the white heron. She likes him and wants to please him, The story catches her thinking that he "is so well worth making happy."

However, although it would enrich her and please her new friend, Sylvia appreciates the grace and beauty of the bird too much to give away the secret of where it lives. As she recalls:

the white heron came flying through the golden air and . . . they watched the sea and the morning together, and Sylvia cannot speak; she cannot tell the heron's secret and give its life away.

Protecting the bird from harm means sacrificing money and the good will of the man, but Sylvia is willing to make these sacrifices to protect the bird.

Why was Sylvia's decision to not reveal the white heron's location difficult?

In Sarah Orne Jewett's narrative, whether to reveal the location of the white heron is the central conflict of the narrative. Moreover, Sylvia's inner conflict of whether to inform the alluring ornithologist or to preserve the heron's life is one that is generated by Sylvia's emerging womanhood as she "could have served and followed him and loved him...."

Certainly, Sylvia has emerged from her timidity as at first the man's whistle has frightened her, but now it causes her to smile with pleasure and she revels in the idea of the "fancied triumph and delight and glory" of disclosing that she has found where the heron nests and hearing the man's response. Still, the harmony with Nature and loyalty to it that the girl has long felt exert a stronger force than any erotic whisperings. Yet, she wonders if "the birds were better friends" than the hunter, caught in her conflict of involvement and detachment.

Why didn't Sylvia reveal the location of the white heron's nest to the stranger?

Sylvia doesn't tell the stranger where to find the heron's nest because she knows he'll kill the herons, and she doesn't want that to happen.

Sylvia is shown to have a great love for nature from childhood. She's so in tune with the area around her that it's simple for her to find the heron that the hunter has glimpsed. However, part of understanding nature is having respect for it. It pains Sylvia to think of the heron's fate if the hunter finds it.

He speaks of stuffed dead birds and assures her and her grandmother that he's shot every one of them. There's no ambiguity as to what the fate of the bird will be if the hunter finds it. Even though she's tempted to tell him once she locates the nest, Sarah Orne Jewett writes, "Sylvia cannot speak; she cannot tell the heron's secret and give its life away."

Even though the hunter could improve Sylvia and her grandmother's lives, she can't make herself a party to the death of the heron by helping him find the nest.

Why didn't Sylvia reveal the location of the white heron's nest to the stranger?

Sylvia loves animals and nature. Living with her grandmother in the woods, her main "valued companion" is a cow called Mistress Moolly. At the beginning of the story she talks how they both walk down the dark path as if they both experience the exact same feelings.

They were going away from whatever light there was, and striking deep into the woods, but their feet were familiar with the path, and it was no matter whether their eyes could see it or not.

As well as Mistress Moolly, the writer humanizes the birds who she say "good-night to each other in sleepy twitters", a hop toad who "wished to get to its hole under the door-step, and was much hindered by the unusual spectators" and even a great pine tree whose "mates were dead and gone long ago."

In comparison, she is in her grandmother's "afraid of folks." When the stranger first whistles to her for example she's scared because the whistle doesn't possess the friendliness of a bird's whistle, but the aggressiveness of a human. Or as she says "the enemy."

In the end she does enjoy the stranger's company, but is always uneasy that he has come to kill animals rather than befriend them. For that reason she can't tell the stranger where the heron is. It would be like handing over a friend to be murdered.