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"An' wha' dae they ca' ye?" he asked, turning his back to the fire, and surveying me with a kindly interest which made me feel as uneasy as if I had been sleeping in a fowl-house. "Tam Collins," I replied readily, though interrupted by a fit of coughing as I pronounced my surname. "Ye'll no be yin o' the M'Callums o' Auchtermauchtie?" he inquired eagerly. "A kent them weel." I shook my head.
This time he decided to go through a hole under the board fence between the barn and the fowl-house. And it was here that, for the first time on this expedition, he was induced by a power outside himself to change his mind. As he approached the hole under the fence, from the radiance of the open yard beyond came another animal, heading for the same point.
In itself it was as snug and comfortable as possible, with a little paddock for the shepherd's horse, an acre or so of garden, now overgrown with self-sown potatoes, peas, strawberry, raspberry, and gooseberry plants, the little thatched fowl-house near, and the dog-kennels; all giving it a thoroughly home-like look.
Seagrave approves, all set to at once and knock up a fowl-house; it won't be more than a day's job, and then the creatures will have a home. There are four very thick cocoa-nut trees close to the house; we will build it under them; it will be a good job over." Mr. Seagrave assented, and they set immediately to work.
We kept a keen look-out for the remains of prehistoric men and beasts, but only found the shells of eggs which a fox had probably stolen from the cure's fowl-house. There were also rabbits' bones, whose presence there was to be explained in the same way.
Adone, with an instinct of compassion and delicacy, left her unwatched and went within. "Where did you find that scarecrow?" asked his mother. "Down by the river. She has nobody and nothing. She comes from the mountains." "There are poor folks enough in Ruscino without adding to them from without," said Clelia Alba impatiently. "Mind she does not rob the fowl-house before she slips sway."
Oh! the garden a mere patch of soil, sloping down abruptly, with a bed where four pear trees stand, and the rest taken up by a fowl-house, made out of green boards, old plaster, and wire network, held together with bits of string.
Passing behind a wooden fence which was a tangle of passion-flower, she opened the door of the fowl-house, and out strutted the mother-hen followed by her pretty brood. Laura had given each of the chicks a name, and she now took Napoleon and Garibaldi up in her hand and laid her cheek against their downy breasts, the younger children following her movements in respectful silence.
And so the little Rabbit was put into a sack with the old picture-books and a lot of rubbish, and carried out to the end of the garden behind the fowl-house. That was a fine place to make a bonfire, only the gardener was too busy just then to attend to it. He had the potatoes to dig and the green peas to gather, but next morning he promised to come quite early and burn the whole lot.
Then, bareheaded and empty-handed, Neptune sat down on his cabin steps to wait for what should happen, and Peter Champneys sat beside him, the gun between his knees. Over there by the fowl-house lay Jake, a horrid blotch in the moonlight. Presently, echoing through the River Swamp, the hunting hounds set up their thrilling, deep-mouthed belling.
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