ned off that we call the salt stall, I don't know why. Here
we established our four chickens. I immediately gave them names: Lova,
Diksy, Valpurga, and Carola. Karsten and I stuffed them with food, and
all day they went about scratching in our kitchen garden, where,
however, nothing ever grows. With shallow, sandy soil, and a frightful
lot of sun, you might know it couldn't amount to anything.

The first thing I did in the morning was to let out the chickens. They
flapped and fluttered around me in the fresh, cool morning stillness
under the maples. It always takes some time for the sunshine to get down
to our place, because of the hill.

Lova, Diksy, and Valpurga were quite ordinary long-legged chickens that
scratched and picked all day long, but Carola began little by little to
behave with more dignity. She stepped out vigorously, and scratched
sideways, stood still for minutes at a time, just as if she were
listening for something, and always let the others help themselves
first. And one fine day she stood on the barn steps, flapped her wings,
and crowed--a regular hoarse, cracked chicken's crow--but crow she did.
Of course she had to be christened over again, and so I called her
Carolus.

And it is Carolus' doings that I want to tell about. Not the first year
he lived; he was well enough behaved then. All summer the chickens were
up in the salt stall, but when winter came they were moved down into our
cellar because of the cold. Br-r-r-r! Hens have a wretched time in
winter. The snow lay thick against the cellar window and shut out what
little gray daylight there was, and down there on the stone floor in the
dampness sat all four chickens and moped, their heads drawn down into
their feathers. At such times one can be very glad not to have been born
a hen. However, I went down there every day and comforted them.

"Think of the summer," I said, "think of the rich ground under the
dewberry hedges, and of the whole kitchen garden in the long sunny
days."

Carolus flapped his wings a little, but the others didn't even do
that--they were utterly discouraged.

But at last came the summer.

Lova, Diksy, and Valpurga each laid a pretty little egg every day up in
the salt stall. What fun it is to go and hunt for eggs! You go and poke
around and hunt and hunt, but they are clever and sly, these hens, and
hide themselves well under pieces of board and rubbish. By and by, off
in some corner you see a gleam of white and t