Page:Stories and story-telling (1915).djvu/226

 straightened him suddenly, like this, halfway, and held his arms out in front, one hand beyond the other, so, as if he were searching for the trigger of a gun.

When the old crow saw him she cried, "Turn back, children, at once," turning herself so suddenly that she bumped into the beak of the first little crow behind her. It was not until she reached her nest built of sticks in the fork of the apple-tree a quarter of a mile away, and had rested a minute, that she breathed freely.

"Oh, my children," she said, "without doubt it was no scarecrow; it was the farmer, alive, and placing his finger on the trigger of his gun to shoot us."

But again when she awoke in the morning light she felt puzzled. "It's very strange," she said. "I've seen a good many scarecrows in my time. I should know a man from a shadow. I'll have another look at him in the broad daylight."

So, as soon as breakfast was over and the crow children had gone to school to hear how featherless grown-ups get crow's feet on their faces, she spread her wings for the cornfield. There stood the scarecrow as plain a humbug as ever deceived the eyes of a blind crow.

"Well," she said, "unless blindness is catching and the bats gave it to me, you're a dried-up corn stalk if ever there was one. If an old crow that was