st announcement of
anything out of the way. Miss Durgan of the Post Office was at the
window as usual, and saw the hen that had caught the unhappy child, in
violent flight up the street with its victim, closely pursued by two
others. You know that swinging stride of the emancipated athletic
latter-day pullet! You know the keen insistence of the hungry hen! There
was Plymouth Rock in these birds, I am told, and even without
Herakleophorbia that is a gaunt and striding strain.

Probably Miss Durgan was not altogether taken by surprise. In spite of
Mr. Bensington's insistence upon secrecy, rumours of the great chicken
Mr. Skinner was producing had been about the village for some weeks.
"Lor!" she cried, "it's what I expected."

She seems to have behaved with great presence of mind. She snatched up
the sealed bag of letters that was waiting to go on to Urshot, and
rushed out of the door at once. Almost simultaneously Mr. Skelmersdale
himself appeared down the village, gripping a watering-pot by the spout,
and very white in the face. And, of course, in a moment or so every one
in the village was rushing to the door or window.

The spectacle of Miss Durgan all across the road, with the entire day's
correspondence of Hickleybrow in her hand, gave pause to the pullet in
possession of Master Skelmersdale. She halted through one instant's
indecision and then turned for the open gates of Fulcher's yard. That
instant was fatal. The second pullet ran in neatly, got possession of
the child by a well-directed peck, and went over the wall into the
vicarage garden.

"Charawk, chawk, chawk, chawk, chawk, chawk!" shrieked the hindmost hen,
hit smartly by the watering-can Mr. Skelmersdale had thrown, and
fluttered wildly over Mrs. Glue's cottage and so into the doctor's
field, while the rest of those Gargantuan birds pursued the pullet, in
possession of the child across the vicarage lawn.

"Good heavens!" cried the Curate, or (as some say) something much more
manly, and ran, whirling his croquet mallet and shouting, to head off
the chase.

"Stop, you wretch!" cried the curate, as though giant hens were the
commonest facts in life.

And then, finding he could not possibly intercept her, he hurled his
mallet with all his might and main, and out it shot in a gracious curve
within a foot or so of Master Skelmersdale's head and through the glass
lantern of the conservatory. Smash! The new conservatory! The Vicar's
wife's beautiful new