t their small brothers and sisters. He was afraid
they would get fatally chilled.

"I needed you bad, Betty, if any more of these little ones was to act
crazy like this," he said as I cautiously embraced him and his downy
babies. "Put these three in your jacket so I can catch the next one that
comes out. Old Dommie is 'most through, and then she can take them all."
His faith in old Dommie, who to my certain knowledge had hatched two
other families since spring, was not misplaced. In less than a half-hour
all egg debris of the family advent had been removed and the babies put
to bed under her breast and subjected to a sharp peck of her controlling
bill.

By this time the sun had begun to drop down over toward Old Harpeth, and
a lovely purple was stealing all over the place which mingled with a
great veil of blue smoke from over by the spring, where, I felt sure,
Dr. Chubb had lighted twenty new altar fires for the welcome of the
home-comers. I wanted to go and see the camp, but someway I felt that it
was time to go to the gate to meet Sam and his great big children, so
down the Byrd and I went.

When we got to the gate they were not in sight, and we started up Brier
Lane to meet them. In my heart there was not the least particle of doubt
that they would all be glad to see me, but I never expected it to happen
as it did. Just as we came to the bend in Brier Lane that skirts around
the first hill I heard beautiful voices raised in a weird joy-chant, and
in a moment they all came into view, all walking and singing, with their
things piled high on the wagons that followed them. In the midst of the
tumbling, frolicking children, the chattering, pointing, exclaiming
women, and the eagerly questioning men strode Sam with a small girl
pickaback across his broad shoulders and the old praying-man walking by
his side in deep conversation. I stood still to wait and let them all
see me. The result was glorious. I had never known anything like it
before. The women all laughed and cried in their excitable foreign way,
and the men's faces showed great white teeth in radiant smiles. They
kissed my hands and even the sleeves of my dress, and some of the
children danced around and around in a very ecstasy of welcome, for I
felt sure that to them I was the keeper of mammoth banana-bags. And I
laughed and sniffed and patted and hugged the women in return, and
nodded and called broken Belgian-English greeting to the men--to all but
Sam. Sa