n to strike
her, raised his gun, and firing charge enough to kill a bear, he blew
poor brave, devoted Brownie into quivering, bloody rags.

This gunner brute knew the young must be hiding near, so looked about to
find them. But no one moved or peeped. He saw not one, but as he tramped
about with heedless, hateful feet, he crossed and crossed again their
hiding-ground, and more than one of the silent little sufferers he
trampled to death, and neither knew nor cared.

Redruff had taken the yellow brute away off down-stream, and now
returned to where he left his mate. The murderer had gone, taking her
remains, to be thrown to the dog. Redruff sought about and found the
bloody spot with feathers, Brownie's feathers, scattered around, and now
he knew the meaning of that shot.

Who can tell what his horror and his mourning were? The outward signs
were few, some minutes dumbly gazing at the place with downcast,
draggled look, and then a change at the thought of their helpless brood.
Back to the hiding-place he went, and called the well-known '_Kreet,
kreet_.' Did every grave give up its little inmate at the magic word?
No, barely more than half; six little balls of down unveiled their
lustrous eyes, and, rising, ran to meet him, but four feathered little
bodies had found their graves indeed. Redruff called again and again,
till he was sure that all who could respond had come, then led them from
that dreadful place, far, far away up-stream, where barbed-wire fences
and bramble thickets were found to offer a less grateful, but more
reliable, shelter.

Here the brood grew and were trained by their father just as his mother
had trained him; though wider knowledge and experience gave him many
advantages. He knew so well the country round and all the
feeding-grounds, and how to meet the ills that harass partridge-life,
that the summer passed and not a chick was lost. They grew and
flourished, and when the Gunner Moon arrived they were a fine family of
six grown-up grouse with Redruff, splendid in his gleaming copper
feathers, at their head. He had ceased to drum during the summer after
the loss of Brownie, but drumming is to the partridge what singing is to
the lark; while it is his love-song, it is also an expression of
exuberance born of health, and when the molt was over and September food
and weather had renewed his splendid plumes and braced him up again, his
spirits revived, and finding himself one day near the old log he