p on Badgy's
throat, while he tried as hard to rend the mink's body with his teeth
and claws.

Suddenly, in the midst of the struggle, the door of the coop was thrown
open and a man's figure appeared. The animals ceased fighting
instantly, and the mink, letting go his hold, disappeared down the hole
that Badgy had dug. But Badgy, surprised at the intrusion, only stared
at the newcomer, and grunted a cross greeting as the light of a lantern
was flashed upon him, sitting there crumpled and bloody.

* * * * *

NEXT morning, when the little girl went out to the haystack, she could
not find Badgy. Instead, as she pulled aside the door that closed the
entrance to the cave, a strange animal shot out and away before she
could catch a glimpse of it. This puzzled her; when she went into the
cave she found a great heap of dirt that troubled her still more. She
saw that in spite of his stockings, Badgy had dug himself out. She
hunted for the hole that she knew would tell her where he had come
through to the surface again, but she could not find it.

She began to run here and there, calling him. There was no answering
grunt. She thought of the potato-bin, and flew to the cellar to see if
he had not returned to his old home, but he was not there.

That night he did not return, nor the next day, nor the next. No one
could tell her where he had gone. For he had disappeared as completely
as if the earth in which he had loved to dig had swallowed him up.

Whenever she spoke of him in the house among the family, there was an
exchange of glances between her mother and the eldest brother. But she
never saw it,--and it was just as well that she did not.

XI

A TRADE AND A TRICK

A THIN column of blue smoke was ascending into the quiet April air from
a spot far out upon the prairie. Against the eastern sky, now faintly
glowing with the coming dawn, it stood forth, uniting the gray heavens
and the duller plains, as straight and clear as a signal-fire. It gave
warning of an Indian camp.

The family at the farm-house, called from their breakfast by the baying
of the dogs, gathered bareheaded about the kitchen door and watched the
mounting pillar, striving to make out any crouching figures at its base.
But no hint of the size of the redskin company could be gained; and,
when the biggest brother had climbed from the lean-to to the ridge-pole
of the roof and his mother had peered from the lesser he