" answered the Doctor with the air of being ready to
do or dare, an attitude which a vision such as his eyes rested upon is
apt to incite in any man thus challenged. "Will you take command? I'm
many times proved incompetent on such occasions, and I feel sure Mother
trusted to your generalship." And together they went through the garden
and over into the chicken yard.

"Now," said Miss Wingate, "I think the thing to do is not to let them
know we are afraid of them. Let's just take their going under the coops
as a matter of course, and then, perhaps, they will go without any
remonstrance."

"Sort of a mental influence dodge," answered the Doctor
enthusiastically. "Let's try it on Spangles first. I somehow feel that
she will be more impressionable than Old Dominick. You influence while
I spread the millet seed in front of her coop." And he bent down in
front of the half barrel and carefully laid a tempting evening meal,
with his eye on Fuss-and-Feathers. Spangles hesitated, stood on one
foot, clucked in an affected tone of voice to her huddling babies and
coquettishly turned her head from one side to the other as if enthusing
over his artistic service before accepting his hospitality. Then, just
as she was poising one dainty foot ready for the first step in advance,
and had sounded a forward note to the cheepers around her, Old Dominick
calmly stalked forward, stepped right across the Doctor's coaxing hand
held out to Spangles, and, settling herself in the coop, began, with
her voracious band of little plebeians, to devour the grain with stolid
appreciation.

Miss Wingate laughed merrily, Teether Pike gurgled and the Doctor
looked up with baffled astonishment.

"That was your fault," he accused; "you influenced Dominick while I was
expending my force in beguiling Spangles. Now, you try to get her in
the next coop yourself. I shan't help you further than to spread the
grain in front of all the coops." And in accordance with his threat the
Doctor disposed of the rest of the food and stood with the empty pan in
his hand. And, like the well-trained flock of biddies that they were,
all the rest of the hen mothers clucked and cajoled their fluffy little
families into their accustomed shelters and began to dispose of their
suppers with contented clucks and cheeps. Only Mrs. Spangles stood afar
and eyed the only vacant coop with evident disdain.

"I don't know what to do," murmured Miss Wingate pleadingly. But the
Doctor sto