Page:Wild folk - Samuel Scoville.djvu/92

70 opened the spring-house to set in a pail of milk. There, right beside the magnificent spring which boiled and bubbled in the centre of the cement floor, a black-and-white stranger was contentedly drinking from a pan of milk that had been placed there to cool. As Mark opened the door, the skunk looked at him calmly, and then quietly raised the banner which had waved over many a bloodless victory. Whereupon the owner of the spring-house backed away, and waited until his visitor had finished his drink and disappeared in a patch of bushes back of the milk-house.

"What about all that talk of shootin' that skunk at sight?" queried Jonas, the hired man, that evening at supper.

"The trouble was, Jonas," returned Mark confidentially, "he got the drop on me. If I'd shot I'd of lost one spring, six gallons of milk, an' a suit of clothes."

"You men are a lot of cowards," scolded his wife. "I'd of found some way to stop that skunk a-drinkin' up a whole pan of good milk right in front of my eyes. He'd not bluff me."

"Mirandy," said Mark solemnly. "you take it from me that skunk ain't no bluffer. If you don't believe it, telegraph Mr. De Haven."

In spite of her threat, it was Miranda herself who afterwards insisted that the skunk should continue to live on the farm without fear or reproach. Late one afternoon she had been coming down Pond Hill on a search for a new-born calf