at the
father's call.

Some fathers take no interest in their little ones, but Redruff joined
at once to help Brownie in the task of rearing the brood. They had
learned to eat and drink just as their father had learned long ago, and
could toddle along, with their mother leading the way, while the father
ranged near by or followed far behind.

The very next day, as they went from the hill-side down toward the creek
in a somewhat drawn-out string, like beads with a big one at each end,
a red squirrel, peeping around a pine-trunk, watched the procession of
downlings with the Run tie straggling far in the rear. Redruff, yards
behind, preening his feathers on a high log, had escaped the of the
squirrel, whose strange perverted thirst for birdling blood was roused
at what seemed so fair a chance. With murderous intent to cut off the
hindmost straggler, he made a dash. Brownie could not have seen him
until too late, but Redruff did. He flew for that red-haired cutthroat;
his weapons were his fists, that is, the knob-joints of the wings, and
what a blow he could strike! At the first onset he struck the squirrel
square on the end of the nose, his weakest spot, and sent him reeling;
he staggered and wriggled into a brush-pile, where he had expected to
carry the little grouse, and there lay gasping with red drops trickling
down his wicked snout. The partridges left him lying there, and what
became of him they never knew, but he troubled them no more.

The family went on toward the water, but a cow had left deep tracks in
the sandy loam, and into one of these fell one of the chicks and peeped
in dire distress when he found he could not get out.

This was a fix. Neither old one seemed to know what to do, but as they
trampled vainly round the edge, the sandy bank caved in, and, running
down, formed a long slope, up which the young one ran and rejoined his
brothers under the broad veranda of their mother's tail.

Brownie was a bright little mother, of small stature, but keen of wit
and sense, and was, night and day, alert to care for her darling chicks.
How proudly she stepped and clucked through the arching woods with her
dainty brood behind her; how she strained her little brown tail almost
to a half-circle to give them a broader shade, and never flinched at
sight of any foe, but held ready to fight or fly, whichever seemed the
best for her little ones.

Before the chicks could fly they had a meeting with old Cuddy; though
it