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 This left but three chicks for Madam Cluck, and the poor hen was nearly heart-broken. After this she did not allow the children to go out of the coop for three days, without their first promising not to go beyond the sound of her cluck, and even then she called them back at the slightest noise. But no mother, however vigilant, could be proof against the gapes, which, disease one of the remaining chicks soon fell a victim to.

Only a pair were left, one for each wing; and the old black hen cuddled them more closely than ever to her breast, and gave them all the love she used to give the whole ten.

The coming of great storms are things that not even man, with all his boasted knowledge, can stand against, much less a feeble black hen. So who could be blamed when one night there came a terrific shower that flooded the coop, drowning one of the chicks, and forcing the other to take refuge upon its mother's back. I found them in the morning huddled up in one corner of the coop, Madam Cluck knee deep in the water, and her one chicken high and dry upon her back.

After this experience with the coop, I turned them loose, and let them roam as they pleased over the place, thinking they could not fare worse than the brood had in the coop; and the black hen guarded this one chick as the apple of her eye. She followed it all day long with her warning curr, and at night she took it upon