wonderful man I ever saw--I mean
that I ever saw with chickens," I said, ending the remark in an agony of
embarrassment. "I don't know much about them. I mean chickens," I hastened
to add, and made matters worse.

"Oh, they are easy, when you get to know 'em, chickens--or men," he said
kindly, without a spark in his eyes back of their black bushes. "Are they
yours?"

"They are all the property I have got in the world," I answered as I
clasped the last pair of biddies to my breast, for while we had been
holding our primitive conversation, I had been obeying his directions and
loading the Birds into Grandmother Craddock's stately equipage. Anxiety
shone from my eyes into his sympathetic ones.

"Well, you'll be an heiress in no time with them to start you, with 'good
management.' I never saw a finer lot," he said, as he walked to the door of
the carriage with me, with the last pair of white Leghorn ladies in his
arms.

"But maybe I haven't got that management," I faltered, with my anxiety
getting tearful in my words.

"Oh, you'll learn," he said, with such heavenly soothing in his voice that
I almost reached out my hands and clung to him as he settled the fussing
poultry in the bottom of the carriage in such a way as to leave room for my
feet among them. Mr. G. Bird was perched on the seat at my side and was
craning his neck down and soothingly scolding his family. "How are you, Mr.
Craddock?" Pan asked of Uncle Cradd's back, and by his question interrupted
an argument that sounded, from the Greek phrases flying, like a battle on
the walls of Troy.

"Well, well, how are you, Adam?" exclaimed Uncle Cradd, as he turned around
and greeted the woodsman with a smile of positive delight.

I had known that man's name was Adam, but I don't know how I knew.

"This is my brother, Mr. William Craddock, who's come home to me to live
and die where he belongs, and that young lady is Nancy. Those chickens are
just a whim of hers, and we have to humor her. Can we lift you as far as
Riverfield?" Uncle Cradd made his introduction and delivered his invitation
all in one breath.

"I'm glad to meet you, sir, and I am grateful for your assistance in
capturing my daughter's whims," said father, as he came partly out of his
B.C. daze.

As he took my hand into his slender, but very powerful grasp, that man had
the impertinence to laugh into my eyes at my parent's double-entendre,
which he had intended as a simple single remark.

"No,