she forgot her mistrust.

After a fortnight the little ones began to droop and she herself did not
feel very well. They were always hungry, and though they ate
enormously, they one and all grew thinner and thinner. The mother was
the last to be affected. But when it came, it came as hard on her--a
ravenous hunger, a feverish headache, and a wasting weakness. She never
knew the cause. She could not know that the dust of the much-used
dust-bath, that her true instinct taught her to mistrust at first, and
now again to shun, was sown with parasitic worms, and that all of the
family were infested.

No natural impulse is without a purpose. The mother-bird's knowledge of
healing was only to follow natural impulse. The eager, feverish craving
for something, she knew not what, led her to eat, or try, everything
that looked eatable and to seek the coolest woods. And there she found a
deadly sumach laden with its poison fruit. A month ago she would have
passed it by, but now she tried the unattractive berries. The acrid
burning juice seemed to answer some strange demand of her body; she ate
and ate, and all her family joined in the strange feast of physic. No
human doctor could have hit it better; it proved a biting, drastic
purge, the dreadful secret foe was downed, the danger passed. But not
for all--Nature, the old nurse, had come too late for two of them. The
weakest, by inexorable law, dropped out. Enfeebled by the disease, the
remedy was too severe for them. They drank and drank by the stream, and
next morning did not move when the others followed the mother. Strange
vengeance was theirs now, for a skunk, the same that could have told
where Runtie went, found and devoured their bodies and died of the
poison they had eaten.

Seven little partridges now obeyed the mother's call. Their individual
characters were early shown and now developed fast. The weaklings were
gone, but there was still a fool and a lazy one. The mother could not
help caring for some more than for others, and her favorite was the
biggest, he who once sat on the yellow chip for concealment. He was not
only the biggest, strongest, and handsomest of the brood, the best of
all, the most obedient. His mother's warning '_rrrrr_' (danger) did not
always keep the others from a risky path or a doubtful food, but
obedience seemed natural to him, and he never failed to respond to her
soft '_K-reet_' (Come), and of this obedience he reaped the reward, for
his days