bs killed the way my father had his for a kingdom. I'll never
forget the first one I saw butchered. I wouldn't feel worse at a hanging
now. And that white ox, Hattie you remember my telling you about him. He
had to be killed, and father sent for the butcher. I was only a lad,
and I was all of a shudder to have the life of the creature I had known
taken from him. The butcher, stupid clown, gave him eight blows before
he struck the right place. The ox bellowed, and turned his great black
eyes on my father, and I fell in a faint."

Miss Laura turned away, and Mrs. Wood followed her, saying: "If ever you
want to kill a cat, Laura, give it cyanide of potassium. I killed a poor
old sick cat for Mrs. Windham the other day. We put half a teaspoonful
of pure cyanide of potassium in a long-handled wooden spoon, and dropped
it on the cat's tongue, as near the throat as we could. Poor pussy she
died in a few seconds. Do you know, I was reading such a funny thing the
other day about giving cats medicine. They hate it, and one can scarcely
force it into their mouths on account of their sharp teeth. The way is,
to smear it on their sides, and they lick it off. A good idea, isn't it?
Here we are at the hen douse, or rather one of the hen houses."

"Don't you keep your hens all together?" asked Miss Laura.

"Only in the winter time," said Mrs. Wood, "I divide my flock in the
spring. Part of them stay here and part go to the orchard to live in
little movable houses that we put about in different places. I feed each
flock morning and evening at their own little house. They know they'll
get no food even if they come to my house, so they stay at home. And
they know they'll get no food between times, so all day long they pick
and scratch in the orchard, and destroy so many bugs and insects that it
more than pays for the trouble of keeping them there."

"Doesn't this flock want to mix up with the other?" asked Miss Laura, as
she stepped into the little wooden house.

"No; they seem to understand. I keep my eye on them for a while at
first, and they soon find out that they're not to fly either over the
garden fence or the orchard fence. They roam over the farm and pick up
what they can get. There's a good deal of sense in hens, if one manages
them properly. I love them because they are such good mothers."

We were in the little wooden house by this time, and I looked around it
with surprise. It was better than some of the poor people's hou