the future. They were many sizes too large for him:
the legs adorned with flaming scarlet tops, reached nearly to his
middle; they flopped up and down at every step, and evinced an evil
propensity for wabbling, and bringing their owner with sorrow to the
ground. They were hard-natured, stiff-soled, uncompromising--but! they
were _boots_!--"sto' boots, whar cos' money!"--and Sawney's cup of
bliss was full.

Any one who has experience in the ways and wiles of the domestic
treasure, must be aware of the painful lack of consideration sometimes
evinced by turkeys in this apparently simple matter of allowing
themselves to be housed. Some evenings, they march straight into their
apartment with the directness and precision of soldiers filing into
barracks; on others the very Prince of Darkness, backed by the three
Fates and the three Furies, apparently takes possession of the
perverse, shallow-pated birds. They wander backward and forward, with
an air of vacancy as though they knew not what to do; they pass and
repass the yawning portal of the turkey house, with heads erect and
eyes fixed on futurity, not only as if they did not see the door, but
actually as if there were no door there to see. And when the maddened
driver, wrought to desperation, hurls into their midst a stick or
stone, hoping fervently and vengefully that it may break a neck or a
leg, they leap nimbly into the air with "put-putterings" of surprise
and rebuke, and then advance cautiously upon the missile and examine it.

The Lanarth turkeys were behaving in just this reprehensible manner,
and Pocahontas was working herself into a frenzy over them. Three
times she engineered the flock successfully up to the open door, and
three times the same old brown hen advanced, peered cautiously into the
house, started tragically aside as though she beheld some evil thing,
and produced a panic and a stampede.

"You miserable wretch!" exclaimed Pocahontas, hurling her empty basket
impotently at the dusky author of her woe, "I could kill you! Shoo!
shoo! Sawney, why don't you help me? Head them! Run round them!
Shoo! shoo! you abominable creatures!"

Sawney essayed to obey, grasping the straps of his boots, and lifting
his feet very high.

"Take them off and run," commanded Pocahontas. But Sawney would as
soon have parted with his skin. "I dwine ter run," he responded, and
gripped his boots valiantly. It was of no use. Sawney had gotten too
much boot for h