alled Elbridge's bird, that was
the year before last."

"There is no Elbridge now," said the old grandfather.

"I know all," said Oliver, "I had a letter from Margaret, telling me the
story and begging me to keep a watch for her boy."

"A wide watch to keep and little to be got by it, I fear," old Sylvester
added.

"Not altogether idle, perhaps; we have sharp eyes in the West and see
many strange things. Jane is confident she saw our Elbridge, making
through Ohio, but two months after he left here; he was riding swiftly,
and in her surprise and suddenness she could neither call nor send after
him."

"You did not tell us of that," said the old man.

"No, I waited some further discovery."

"Be silent now, you may easily waken hopes to be darkened and dashed to
the ground. Which way made the boy?"

"Southward."

During this discourse, as though he distinguished the sound of his young
master's name and knew to what it related, Chanticleer walked slowly,
and as if by accident or at leisure, up and down the garden-wall,
keeping as near to the speakers as was at all seemly. When they stopped
speaking he leaped gently to the ground and softly clapped his wings.

A moment after there came hurrying into the garden, in a wild
excitement, and all struggling to speak first, little Sam Peabody in the
lead, Robert, the flat-featured youth of thirteen, and Peabody Junior,
(who, it should be mentioned, having found his way into a pantry a
couple of minutes after his arrival with the Captain, and appropriated
to his own personal use an entire bottle of cherry brandy, had been
straightway put to bed, from which he had now been released not more
than a couple of hours), and to announce as clamorously as they
respectively could, that Brundage's Bull had just got into "our big
meadow."

"Nobody hurt?" asked old Sylvester.

"Nobody hurt, grandfather, but he's ploughing up the meadow at a
dreadful rate," said little Sam Peabody.

"Like wild," Peabody Junior added.

This statement, strongly as it was made, seemed to have no particular
effect on old Sylvester. Oliver Peabody, on the other hand, was
exceedingly indignant, and was for proceeding to extremities
immediately, the expulsion of the Brundage bull, and the demanding of
damages for allowing his cattle to cross the boundary line of the two
farms.

Old Sylvester listened to his violence with a blank countenance; nor did
he seem to comprehend that any special outrage had