e road-house and the bar, so we did purty well. It
wasn't necessary to work any longer at that bogus placer. Evenin's we
sat around outside and swapped yarns, and I bragged on my chickens. The
chickens would gather round close to listen. They liked to hear their
praises sung, all right. You bet they _sabe_! The only reason a chicken,
or any other critter, isn't intelligent is because he hasn't no chance
to expand.

Why, we used to run races with 'em. Some of us would hold two or more
chickens back of a chalk line, and the starter'd blow the horn from a
hundred yards to a mile away, dependin' on whether it was a sprint or
for distance. We had pools on the results, gave odds, made books, and
kept records. After the thing got knowed we made money hand over fist.

* * * * *

The stranger broke off abruptly and began to roll a cigarette.

"What did you quit it for, then?" ventured Charley, out of the hushed
silence.

"Pride," replied the stranger solemnly. "Haughtiness of spirit."

"How so?" urged Charley, after a pause.

"Them chickens," continued the stranger, after a moment, "stood around
listenin' to me a-braggin' of what superior fowls they was until they
got all puffed up. They wouldn't have nothin' whatever to do with the
ordinary chickens we brought in for eatin' purposes, but stood around
lookin' bored when there wasn't no sport doin'. They got to be just like
that Four Hundred you read about in the papers. It was one continual
round of grasshopper balls, race meets, and afternoon hen-parties. They
got idle and haughty, just like folks. They got to feelin' so
aristocratic the hens wouldn't have no eggs."

Nobody dared say a word.

"Windy Bill's snake----" began the narrator genially.

"Stranger," broke in Windy Bill, with great emphasis, "as to that snake,
I want you to understand this: yereafter in my estimation that snake is
nothin' but an ornery angle-worm!"

FOOTNOTE:

[F] Reprinted by special permission from "Arizona Nights." Copyright,
1907, by Doubleday, Page and Company.

[Illustration]

VII.--The Devil-Fish[G]

_By Norman Duncan_

WHEN the Minister of Justice for the colony of Newfoundland went away
from Ruddy Cove by the bay steamer, he chanced to leave an American
magazine at the home of Billy Topsail's father, where he had passed the
night. The magazine contained an illustrated article on the gigantic
species of cephalopods[1] popularly known as