when he came and loudly
called her, as of old, at their earliest tryst, he heard a sound in the
bushes, as at first, and there was his missing Brownie bride with ten
little peeping partridges following after.

Redruff skimmed to her side, terribly frightening the bright-eyed
downlings, and was just a little dashed to find the brood with claims
far stronger than his own. But he soon accepted the change, and
thenceforth joined himself to the brood, caring for them as his father
never had for him.

VI

Good fathers are rare in the grouse world. The mother-grouse builds her
nest and hatches out her young without help. She even hides the place of
the nest from the father and meets him only at the drum-log and the
feeding-ground, or perhaps the dusting-place, which is the club-house of
the grouse kind.

When Brownie's little ones came out they had filled her every thought,
even to the forgetting of their splendid father. But on the third day,
when they were strong enough, she had taken them with her at the
father's call.

Some fathers take no interest in their little ones, but Redruff joined
at once to help Brownie in the task of rearing the brood. They had
learned to eat and drink just as their father had learned long ago, and
could toddle along, with their mother leading the way, while the father
ranged near by or followed far behind.

The very next day, as they went from the hill-side down toward the creek
in a somewhat drawn-out string, like beads with a big one at each end, a
red squirrel, peeping around a pine-trunk, watched the processing of
downlings with the Runtie straggling far in the rear. Redruff, yards
behind, preening his feathers on a high log, had escaped the eye of the
squirrel, whose strange, perverted thirst for birdling blood was roused
at what seemed so fair a chance. With murderous intent to cut off the
hindmost straggler, he made a dash. Brownie could not have seen him
until too late, but Redruff did. He flew for that red-haired cutthroat;
his weapons were his fists, that is, the knob-joints of the wings, and
what a blow he could strike! At the first onset he struck the squirrel
square on the end of the nose, his weakest spot, and sent him reeling;
he staggered and wriggled into a brush-pile, where he had expected to
carry the little grouse, and there lay gasping with red drops trickling
down his wicked snout. The partridges left him lying there, and what
became of him they never knew,