on from the family
council gathered about the supper table.

She found it a hard task. Her big brothers urged Badgy's total
uselessness as well as his growing love to burrow, forgetting how
bravely he had always stood between his mistress and any real or fancied
danger. The little girl cried bitterly as she begged for his life, and
vainly offered the entire contents of her tin bank, now carefully
hoarded for two years, to help repair the damage he had done. She was
finally put to bed in an uncontrollable fit of grief.

When she was gone, the memory of her tear-stained face melted her
brothers' wrath. They even laughed heartily over Badgy's disastrous
industry; and at last, relenting, they decided that he should live,
provided he could be kept out of further mischief. The little girl heard
the good news early in the morning and was overjoyed. She declared that
Badgy should be good for the rest of his days, and she spent the
afternoon fixing up the new quarters in the cave.

For the first few nights Badgy was chained in order to wean him from the
old to the new home, his chain being made so short that he could not
dig far into the ground under the stack. This wore upon him so that he
grew cross, thinner than ever before, and generally disheveled. The
little girl saw that another week of such confinement would all but kill
him; while if he were shut up in the cave unchained he would undermine
the stack. She feared, however, to give him his entire freedom; so she
set to work to puzzle out a scheme that would solve the problem.

At last she hit upon an idea that seemed practicable. She would tie up
his fore feet so that he could not dig! Then he could go unchained in
the cave, with only the door of it--the top of a big dry-goods box--to
restrict his movements. Aided by her mother's scissors, some twine, and
a piece of grain sacking, she put the idea into instant execution.

Badgy did not like the innovation at all. He squirmed about so when the
little girl was tying up his feet that she made slow progress. And when
she was done, he tried vainly to pull off his new stockings with his
sharp teeth, grunting his disapproval at every tug. He worked himself
into a perfect fury as he bit and tore, and finally rolled clumsily to
the back of the cave, where he lay growling angrily.

Pleased with her success, the little girl left him. But she had failed
to reckon with Badgy's nature, and her plan was doomed.

It was now early a