Page:Popular Tales of the Germans (Volume 2).djvu/119

 On this he tretched out his ooty arms towards the infant.

As a brood hen, aware of the hawk hovering high over head in the air, or alarmed at an attack from the wanton paniel in the court-yard, firt warns her chickens by anxious chuckling to retire into the trong hold of the pen, then raies her feathers, preads her wings, and prepares for an unequal combat with the tronger foe—o our intrepid mother darted her clinched fit, quick as lightening, into the collier’s beard, reolutely exclaiming, ‘Monter! thou halt firt tear the mother’s heart out of this body, before thou robbet me of my child!’ Number-Nip Was not prepared for o reolute an aault; he tarted back as if afraid: indeed he had never met with o rough an experiment in the whole coure of his tudy of mankind. ‘There is no occaion to put thyelf in a paion,’ aid he, with a friendly mile, ‘I am no cannibal, as thou imaginet, neither will I do thee or thy children the ‘leat