Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/172

 Michael himself when Steve Barron came, as he did daily, to see how the home on the rushy point was getting on. At first he never got away from his inspection without bitten legs and buffeted knees. But at length Michael, with his high intelligence, came to recognize that the tall being whom he could neither hurt nor terrify was altogether friendly, however unwelcome, and ceased to greet him with anything worse than a monitory hiss.

When there were six big white eggs in the nest (a mate of Michael's own kind would have laid only four, or possibly five, and these would have been of a creamy buff in colour), the happy grey goose began to sit. Now Michael grew more savage in his guardianship; and Steve Barron, well content, refrained from tormenting the pair with his attentions, only visiting the pond each morning to put fresh feed in the trough. On one of these morning visits he found near the edge of the pond the drowned body of a big weasel. The weasel had made the mistake of thinking the guardian of the nest an ordinary gander. Michael had caught him by the hack of the neck, with the tenacity of a bulldog, and held him under water till his many murderous crimes were expiated. Barron sometimes wondered how a fox would fare in a fight with his redoubtable favourite. But, perhaps fortunately for Michael, the foxes of that neighbourhood were too wary to venture so near the farm-yard. They had no mind to invite the