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 sacking party emptied the rooms of their contents. In the fowl run a hen was crooning sleepily in its coop. It was a very soft, liquid, soothing sound.

Presently out came the invaders with their loot—one with a picture, another with a vase, another bearing the gramophone upside down.

Then I heard somebody—Charlie again, it seemed to me—propose a raid on the fowl run.

The fowls had had their moments of unrest since they had been our property, but what they had gone through with us was peace compared with what befell them then. Not even on that second evening of our visit, when we had run unmeasured miles in pursuit of them, had there been such confusion. Roused abruptly from their beauty sleep, they fled in all directions. The summer evening was made hideous with the noise of them.