up
the middle of the yard toward the kitchen door. His quills made a dry,
rustling noise as he went; his claws rattled on the chips, and in the
unshadowed open he was most audaciously in evidence. His bearing was
not defiant, but self-reliant, as of one who minded his own business
and demanded to be let alone. From the stables across the yard came
the stamping of horses' hoofs; a turkey in the tree behind the
barn _quit-quitted_ warningly; and a long-drawn, high-pitched
_kwee-ee-ee-ee-ee_ of inquiry came from the wakeful Leghorn cock in
the poultry-house. To all these unfamiliar sounds the porcupine turned
the deaf ear of self-contained indifference.

At this moment around from the front door-step came the farmer's big
black and white dog, to see what was exciting his family. He was a
wise dog, and versed in the lore of the wilderness. Had the intruder
been a bear he would have sought to attract its attention, and raised
an outcry to summon his master to the fray. But a porcupine! He was
too wary to attack it, and too dignified to make any fuss over it.
With a scornful _woof_, he turned away, and strolled into the garden,
to dig up an old bone which he had buried in the cucumber-bed.

The porcupine, meanwhile, had found something that interested him.
Near the kitchen door stood an empty wooden box, shining in the
moonlight. First its bright colour, then its scent, attracted his
attention. It had recently contained choice flakes of salted codfish,
and the salt had soaked deep into its fibres. With the long, keen
chisels of his front teeth, he attacked the wood eagerly,--and the
loud sound of his gnawings echoed on the stillness. It awoke the
farmer, who rubbed his eyes, arose on his elbow, listened a moment,
muttered, "Another of them durn porkypines!" and dropped to sleep
again.

When the leisurely adventurer had eaten as much of the box as he could
hold, he took it into his head to go home,--which meant, to any
comfortable tree back in the woods. His home was at large. This time
he decided to go through a hole under the board fence between the barn
and the fowl-house. And it was here that, for the first time on this
expedition, he was induced by a power outside himself to change his
mind. As he approached the hole under the fence, from the radiance of
the open yard beyond came another animal, heading for the same point.
The stranger was much smaller than the porcupine, and wore no panoply
of points. But it had the