nce was too small for him, and then the chickens went out in
the alley, and the hen followed them out. I shall always think she told
the chickens to go out, so she would have an excuse to go after them,
and flirt with the rooster, and I think it is a perfect shame. She is
out in the alley half the time, and I could cuff her. It seems to me
wrong to so soon forget a deceased rooster, but I suppose a hen can't be
any more than human. Say, you don't want to buy a good dead rooster
do you? You could pick it and sell it to somebody that owes you, for a
spring chicken."

"No, I don't want any deceased poultry, that died of grief, and you
better go home and watch your hen, or you will be bereaved some more,"
and the grocery man went out in the shed to see if the cat was over
its fit, and when he came back the boy was gone, and after a while the
grocery man saw a crowd in front of the store and he went out and found
the dead rooster lying on the vegetable stand, with a paper pinned on
its breast on which was a sign:--

THIS RUSTER DIDE OF COLIX.

FOR SALE CHEAP TO BOARDING HOUSE ONLY.

He took the dead rooster and threw it out in the street, and looked
up and down the street for the bad boy, and went in and hid a raw hide
where he could reach it handy.

CHAPTER XIX.

ONE MORE JOKE ON THE OLD MAN. UNCLE EZRA RETURNS--THE BASKET
ON THE STEPS--THE ANONYMOUS LETTER--"O BROTHER THAT I SHOULD
LIVE TO SEE THIS DAY!"--AN UGLY DUTCH BABY--THE OLD MAN
WHEELS THE BABY NOW--A FROG IN THE OLD MAN'S BED.

"I see your Pa wheeling the baby around a good deal lately," said the
grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the store one evening to buy a
stick of striped pepperment candy for the baby, while his Pa stopped
the baby wagon out on the sidewalk and waited for the boy, with an
expression of resignation on his face.

"What's got into your Pa to be nurse girl this hot weather?"

"O, we have had a circus at our house," said the boy, as he came in
after putting the candy in the baby's hand. "You see, Uncle Ezra came
back from Chicago, where he had been to sell some cheese, and he stopped
over a couple of days with us, and he said we must play one more joke
on Pa before he went home. We played it, and it is a wonder I am alive,
because I never saw Pa so mad in all my life. Now this is the last time
I go into any joke on shares. If I play any more jokes I don't