ought up at the new stacks, they paused for breath, the little girl
discovered, to the mystification of the pointer, who did not know one
leghorn from another, and to her own disgust, that since their threading
of the sorghum they had been after the wrong chicken!

The little girl sprawled on the sunny side of a stack for an hour or two
after that, and chewed straws. She pulled off her shoes to rest her
stockingless feet, and put her head on Godfrey's damp side. For she had
resolved to postpone the catching of Sassy till evening, when the
elusive pullet would be sleepily seated on a two-by-four in the empty
cow-stall that now served for a coop.

When the early November twilight fell upon the farm-yard, the little
girl roused Godfrey by gently pulling his tail and skipped round to the
barn door. Under ordinary circumstances, the task of creeping upon an
unsuspecting chicken and seizing it for the block would have been
unpleasant. But, influenced by her long dislike of the pullet, and
recalling her tiresome experience of the afternoon, she chuckled to
think that she would soon have her hands clasped tightly about Sassy's
yellow legs. "I'll not make a mistake _this_ time," she said to herself.

She entered the barn slyly and stole down behind the stalls until she
came opposite the perches. The chickens were settling themselves for the
night, moving and murmuring drowsily. As she peeped among them, her
glance fell upon Sassy, outlined against the small square window beyond
and roosted comfortably with her beak toward the manger, all unconscious
of her nearing doom. The little girl was certain that it was she, for
there was no mistaking the rakish lop of the serrated comb, or the once
white under-feathers soiled to a bluish cast.

The little girl waited, restraining the excited pointer, until the light
had faded from the square window. It was then so dark that the chickens
could not see the malevolent fingers that, thrust softly up among them,
grabbed a leghorn's shanks; and there was only a mildly concerned
"k-r-r-r!" from an old, watchful hen as the little girl retreated, one
hand doing almost fatal duty around an ill-starred neck.

By the time that the little girl, triumphantly bearing both her prey,
heads down, reached the mounting-log at the front door of the house,
where the eldest brother awaited her with the hatchet, it was nearly as
dark outside as it had been in the barn. So the eldest brother--for the
little g