Page:Stories and story-telling (1915).djvu/225

 a shadow. I'll go and have a look at him in broad daylight."

So as soon as breakfast was over and the crow children had gone to school to hear how featherless children make crow's nests with their fingers, she spread her wings for the cornfield where she had seen the brand new scarecrow. There he stood as plain a humbug as ever deceived the eyes of a blind crow.

"I'm not old enough to be blind yet," she said; "you're a dried-up cornstalk if ever there was one. You'll not frighten me this evening and send me and my children scurrying home." And she sang mockingly,

"Caw, caw, caw, I know you, poor old stalk, Bloodless is your body,  You neither run nor walk."

But the clever scarecrow kept his temper and answered never a word. So again the old crow had to take herself off no wiser about his thoughts.

Well, toward evening along came flying again the old black crow, as old as the hills, with her five black children after her. And again the scarecrow 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, then