in strength as the fox put forth his, and after a
quarter of a mile race, racing that was somehow all away from Taylor's
Hill, the bird got unaccountably quite well, and, rising with a decisive
whirr, flew off through the woods, leaving the fox utterly dumfounded to
realize that he had been made a fool of, and, worst of all, he now
remembered that this was not the first time he had been served this
very trick, though he never knew the reason for it.

Meanwhile Mother Partridge skimmed in a great circle and came by a
roundabout way back to the little fuzz-balls she had left hidden in the
woods.

With a wild bird's keen memory for places, she went to the very
grass-blade she last trod on, and stood for a moment fondly to admire
the perfect stillness of her children. Even at her step not one had
stirred, and the little fellow on the chip, not so very badly concealed
after all, had not budged, nor did he now; he only closed his eyes a
tiny little bit harder, till the mother said:

'_K-reet_,' (Come, children) and instantly, like a fairy story, every
hole gave up its little baby-partridge, and the wee fellow on the chip,
the biggest of them all really, opened his big-little eyes and ran to
the shelter of her broad tail, with a sweet little '_peep peep_' which
an enemy could not have heard three feet away, but which his mother
could not have missed thrice as far, and all the other thimblefuls of
down joined in, and no doubt thought themselves dreadfully noisy, and
were proportionately happy.

The sun was hot now. There was an open space to cross on the road to the
water, and, after a careful lookout for enemies, the mother gathered the
little things under the shadow of her spread fantail and kept off all
danger of sunstroke until they reached the brier thicket by the stream.

Here a cottontail rabbit leaped out and gave them a great scare. But the
flag of truce he carried behind was enough. He was an old friend; and
among other things the little ones learned that day that Bunny always
sails under a flag of truce, and lives up to it too.

And then came the drink, the purest of living water, though silly men
had called it Mud Creek.

At first the little fellows didn't know how to drink, but they copied
their mother, and soon learned to drink like her and give thanks after
every sip. There they stood in a row along the edge, twelve little brown
and golden balls on twenty-four little pink-toed, in-turned feet, with
twelve