wo out of the nine were dead, and took them into the vicarage
kitchen. Then each boy, with a pig held tenderly in his arms like a
baby, crouched in front of the broad hearth and tried to induce them to
swallow some warm milk.

"Choug, choug, choug," grunted Gabriel in fond imitation of the mother
pig.

"Ch-ch-choug," repeated Roger, dandling his his charge on the other
side.

Presently all the seven pigs were warmed and fed, and put into a large
rabbit-hutch just outside the kitchen door; they were quiet now, and lay
in a black contented heap, with their little eyes blinking lazily. The
boys stood and looked at them gravely.

"We shall have to feed them every hour," said Roger, "Zillah says so."

"Oh! Roger," cried Gabriel doubtfully, "do you think we shall ever
bring them up?"

"We _will_ bring them up," replied Roger, clenching his fist with quiet
determination.

But it really was not such an easy matter as some people might suppose,
and especially was it difficult to manage at night. The boys divided
the work in a business-like manner, and took turns to go down every
alternate hour to feed their troublesome foster-children. Zillah, the
cook, allowed the hutch to be brought into the kitchen at night, and
undertook to feed the pigs at six o'clock in the morning, but until then
the boys were responsible and never once flinched from what they had
undertaken. It was getting cold weather now, and bed was delightfully
cosy and warm, but nevertheless little Gabriel would tumble out with his
eyes half shut, at Roger's first whisper of "Your turn now," and creep
through the lonely house and down the kitchen stairs. They had arranged
an ingenious feeding apparatus with a quill inserted through the cork of
a medicine bottle, and the pigs took to it quite kindly, sucked away
vigorously, and throve apace.

But it was hard work, when the first excitement of it was over, and
Gabriel felt it particularly; he was a delicate boy, and after one or
two of these night excursions he would lie shivering in his little bed,
and find it impossible to go to sleep again, while Roger snored
peacefully at his side.

It need hardly be said that the vicar knew nothing of these proceedings,
and Ben was at college, so matters were allowed to go on in this way for
nearly a month, by which time Gabriel had managed to get a very bad cold
on his chest, and a cough. As the pigs got fatter, and rounder, and
more lively, he became thinner