Page:Stories and story-telling (1915).djvu/224

 had to take herself off without knowing what he was thinking of.

Now the scarecrow was clever. He made friends with Magic Darkness and Moving Wind. He had made up his mind to frighten thieving crows away, no matter how old and knowing they might be. And that very evening when the old black crow, as old as the hills, came flying toward the cornfield, with her five black children after her, he whispered, "Now, Magic Darkness and Moving Wind, help me."

And they did. Magic Darkness came down and hid his headlessness, and Moving Wind bent his body and pushed his arms together so that he looked exactly as if he were the farmer stooping to load a gun.

When the old black crow saw this, she whispered, "Turn back, children, and don't speak for your lives;" and although she was as old as the hills, she turned tail as fast as she could, with her five black children after her. When she reached her nest built of sticks in the fork of an apple-tree a quarter of a mile away, she breathed more freely.

"Oh, my children," she panted, "it was no cornstalk scarecrow at all; it was the farmer himself, alive and loading his gun for us."

But when she awoke in the morning light, she felt rather puzzled. "I've seen a good many scarecrows in my time," she said; "I should know a man from