ization. No call of the wild in hers! She preferred her cage,
gilded or otherwise. Each afternoon the cage was placed out on the lawn
so Pollymckittrick could have her sun bath. One day a big redtail hawk
sailed by. Pollymckittrick fell backward off her perch, flat on her
back. The sorrowing family gathered to observe this extraordinary case
of heart failure. After an interval Pollymckittrick unfilmed one yellow
eye.

"Po--o--or Pollymckittrick!" she remarked.

At the sight of that hawk Pollymckittrick had fainted!

The third institution having to do with the house was undoubtedly
Redmond. Redmond was another of the old soldiers who had in their age
sought out their beloved General. Redmond was a sort of all-round man.
He built the fires very early in the morning; and he did your boots and
hunting clothes, got out the decoys, plucked the ducks, saw to the
shells, fed the dogs, and was always on hand at arrival and departure to
lend a helping hand. He dwelt in a square room in the windmill tower
together with a black cat and all the newspapers in the world. The cat
he alternately allowed the most extraordinary liberties or disciplined
rigorously. On the latter occasions he invariably seized the animal and
hurled it bodily through the open window. The cat took the long fall
quite calmly, and immediately clambered back up the outside stairway
that led to the room. The newspapers he read, and clipped therefrom
items of the most diverse nature to which he deprecatingly invited
attention. Once in so often a strange martial fervour would obsess him.
Then the family, awakened in the early dawn, would groan and turn over,
realizing that its rest was for that morning permanently shattered. The
old man had hoisted his colours over the windmill tower, and now in a
frenzy of fervour was marching around and around the tower beating the
long roll on his drum. After one such outbreak he would be his ordinary,
humble, quiet, obliging, almost deprecating self for another month or
so. The ranch people took it philosophically.

The fourth institution was Nobo. Nobo was a Japanese woman who bossed
the General. She was a square-built person of forty or so who had also
been with the family unknown years. Her capabilities were undoubted; as
also her faith in them. The hostess depended on her a good deal; and at
the same time chafed mildly under her calm assumption that she knew
perfectly what the situation demanded. The General took her dom