Page:Letters from an Oregon Ranch.djvu/127

 The offered sacrifice I regard as the noblest impulse of Thomas Graham’s life, and I do hope that his recording angel made a note of it. I was not quite selfish enough to take advantage of his magnanimity, and yet was so lacking of the stuff of which heroes are made that I could not sit calmly by and see him eat the precious egg alone. So it was regretfully laid away until another should be found. After three more days of suspense, Tom came in, saying, “What do you think of this insolence?” handing me an egg no larger than a quail’s.

That little egg instantly evoked from memory a picture of the old garden of “The House of the Seven Gables,” and stalking about in it, “with the dignity of interminable descent,” a grotesque little chanticleer, followed by his two little wives “and the one chicken of the world.”

I asked Tom if he thought it possible we had become the owners of one of the Pyncheon fowls.

“I don’t remember them.”

“Yes, you do; the heirloom of the Pyncheon family,”—mentioning some of their characteristics.

“Oh, yes! Now I know; according to tradition, they were once the size of turkeys, but had sort of petered out, like the family, until they became no larger than pigeons. I fancy the three venerable ancestors having died of old age, the youngest and sole survivor of that aristocratic race, finding it dull alone in