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THE next and following days were spent in removing our furniture and property, particularly our poultry, which had multiplied greatly. We also constructed a poultry-yard, at a sufficient distance from our house to save our sleep from disturbance, and still so near that we could easily tend them.

The hanging of curtains was suspended while they rushed out to see the newly arrived rabbits with their meek eyes and tremulous pink mouths, or dashed out to the poultry-yard to have another look at the downy little fluffs of yellow that were pretending to be chickens. But the real excitement of the day was when the workmen had departed, and Mr.

If he wished to vary the daily routine of pork and potatoes, he must try to obtain some fish or native game. Failing these, he had only his own garden and poultry-yard to look to. Often in the earlier days, while the Maoris were still unfriendly, even pork and potatoes were not to be had. More than once Henry Williams and his family were brought to the verge of starvation.

The chief thing was to hinder these plunderers from reaching the plateau, for the garden and the poultry-yard would then have been at their mercy, and immense, perhaps irreparable mischief, would inevitably be the result, especially with regard to the corn-field.

The copiousness of this rural repertory may be guessed from the numerous titles of that nature, such as "the Cow," "the Ass," "the Kid," "the Sow," "the Swine," "the Sick Boar," "the Farmer," "the Countryman," "Harlequin Countryman," "the Cattle-herd," "the Vinedresser," "the Fig- gatherer," "Woodcutting," "Pruning," "the Poultry-yard."

His youngest daughter clung to his right arm, and an older one to his left, when he rose from table to go with them to the poultry-yard. On the way thither a servant announced to him that the Lady Setchem wished to see him. "Take her to your mistress," he said. But the slave who held in his hand a handsome gift in money explained that the widow wished to speak with him alone.

I felt angry with the ducks, and thought they might have at any rate saved their own lives; but nothing could alter the melancholy returns of the missing and dead. My poultry-yard was, for all practical purposes, annihilated, just as it was at its greatest perfection and the pride and joy of my heart.

Proofs, however, were too strong. Ready-Money Jack told his story in a straightforward independent way, nothing daunted by the presence in which he found himself. He had suffered from various depredations on his sheep-fold and poultry-yard, and had at length kept watch, and caught the delinquent in the very act of making off with a sheep on his shoulders.

And at once he begged M. Folgat to visit his domain, and, with all the enthusiasm of the land-owner, he praised the flavor of his duchess pears, the bright colors of his dahlias, the new arrangements in his poultry-yard, which was full of rabbit-houses, and the beauty of his pond, with its ducks of all colors and all possible varieties. In his heart, M. Folgat swore at this enthusiasm.

After the stables and coachhouses came the piggery, the rabbit hutches, and finally an immense poultry-yard divided into a thousand compartments, and sheltering a whole horde of poultry of all sorts; fowls of all kinds and of all breeds, geese, guineafowl, pigeons, ducks, and what all besides. What wasn't there in that prodigious poultry-yard?