he bars.
She crossed the corral at a run, and intercepted two of the chicks that
were trailing somewhat behind their real mamma. These she undertook
to appropriate, and assumed a high tone with the bantam, who was the
smaller, and hence obliged to retreat with her still numerous family.
I interfered, and put matters straight; but the adjustment was only
temporary. In an hour I saw Em'ly immensely busy with two more bantams,
leading them about and taking a care of them which I must admit seemed
perfectly efficient.

And now came the first incident that made me suspect her to be demented.

She had proceeded with her changelings behind the kitchen, where one of
the irrigation ditches ran under the fence from the hay-field to supply
the house with water. Some distance along this ditch inside the field
were the twelve turkeys in the short, recently cut stubble. Again Em'ly
set off instantly like a deer. She left the dismayed bantams behind her.
She crossed the ditch with one jump of her stout blue legs, flew over
the grass, and was at once among the turkeys, where, with an instinct
of maternity as undiscriminating as it was reckless, she attempted to
huddle some of them away. But this other mamma was not a bantam, and in
a few moments Em'ly was entirely routed in her attempt to acquire a new
variety of family.

This spectacle was witnessed by the Virginian and myself, and it
overcame him. He went speechless across to the bunk-house, by himself,
and sat on his bed, while I took the abandoned bantams back to their own
circle.

I have often wondered what the other fowls thought of all this. Some
impression it certainly did make upon them. The notion may seem out of
reason to those who have never closely attended to other animals than
man; but I am convinced that any community which shares some of our
instincts will share some of the resulting feelings, and that birds and
beasts have conventions, the breach of which startles them. If there be
anything in evolution, this would seem inevitable; At all events,
the chicken-house was upset during the following several days. Em'ly
disturbed now the bantams and now the turkeys, and several of these
latter had died, though I will not go so far as to say that this was
the result of her misplaced attentions. Nevertheless, I was seriously
thinking of locking her up till the broods should be a little older,
when another event happened, and all was suddenly at peace.

The Judge's sette