ter before you could shout, "Murder!"

What followed was painful. Mrs. Blackie went clean demented. Blackie
went--not so demented. (It always appeared to me that his was a more
practical mind than his wife's, perhaps because he wore a more
conspicuous livery.) Mrs. Blackie kept passing and repassing the cats'
backs, flying from bough to bough, and sometimes touching and sometimes
not touching them. It was useless, of course, this pathetic charging;
and it was foolish.

Blackie charged, too, but not within feet.

Suddenly the old cat, who had had one eye upon Mrs. Blackie the whole
time, sprang up and struck quickly twice. There was a chain of shrieks
from Mrs. Blackie, and down she went in the grip of the clawed death.
She never got up again.

What had happened was simple enough. One of the laborers working on
the trench, knowing of the nest, had, out of curiosity, approached a
little too close, when the bevy of youngsters, being ready to fly, but
not knowing it before this great fright, burst apart at his approach
like a silent cannon cracker. The fear showed them they could use
their wings.

All three had made, flying low and weakly, for the nearest hedge, which
was the garden hedge--two to the side which comprised their father's
hunting-ground, and one to the side dominated by their ma. And the old
cat and her kitten had seen them coming, and had given chase.

* * * * * *

Blackie discovered his remaining progeny sitting about in bushes,
squawking, a few minutes later, when he returned, somewhat agitated to
his precious lawn, and there he promptly proceeded to feed them. The
task was such a large one, and took so long, and so many worms had to
be cut up, and so much bread, and, I may say, when all else failed, so
many daisies had to be picked, before he finally silenced their
ceaseless, craving remarks, that, by the time he had finished feeding
himself and had a clean up, something of the pain of the tragedy had
gone from him.

And fine fat blackbirds he made of those youngsters, too, in the end, I
want to tell you, for he stuck to 'em like a brick.

III

UNDER THE YELLOW FLAG

A little past noon each day the sun covered a crack between two boards
on the summer-house floor, and up through that aperture, for three
days, had come a leggy, racy-looking, wolfish black spider. Each day,
as it grew hotter, she extended her sphere of jerky investigation,
vanishi