breeders sell to them or to others, it being no part of
their business to bring up the chickens. The fattening business is
quite different. At these places there are long rows of little boxes
piled up on each other into a wall five feet high. The door of each of
these boxes has a hole in it through which the fowl can put its head,
with a little sort of shutter that closes down on it. A fowl is placed
in each bow. Then the attendants go around two together; one carries a
basket filled with little balls of meal, the other lifts the shutter,
and as the fowl puts its head out catches it by the neck, makes it
open its beak, and with his other hand pushes the ball of meal down
its throat. They are so skillful that the operation takes scarce a
moment; then they go on to the next, and so on down the long rows
until they have fed the last of those under their charge. Then they
begin again afresh."

"Why do they keep them in the dark?" the fowler asked.

"They told us that they did it because in the dark they were not
restless, and slept all the time between their meals. Then each time
the flap is lifted they think it is daylight, and pop out their heads
at once to see. In about ten days they get quite fat and plump, and
are ready for market."

"It seems a wonderful deal of trouble," the fowler said. "But I
suppose, as they have a fine market close at hand, and can get good
prices, it pays them. It seems more reasonable to me than the hatching
business. Why they should not let the fowls hatch their own eggs is
more than I can imagine."

"Fowls will lay a vastly greater number of eggs than they will hatch,"
Chebron said. "A well-fed fowl should lay two hundred and fifty eggs
in the year; and, left to herself, she will not hatch more than two
broods of fifteen eggs in each. Thus, you see, as it pays the
peasants much better to rear fowls than to sell eggs, it is to their
profit to send their eggs to the hatching-places, and so to get a
hundred and twenty-five chickens a year instead of thirty."

"I suppose it does," the fowler agreed. "But here we are, my lord, at
the end of our journey. There is the point where we are to land, and
your servant who hired us is standing there in readiness for you. I
hope that you are satisfied with your day's sport."

Chebron said they had been greatly pleased, and in a few minutes the
boat reached the landing-place, where Rabah was awaiting them. One of
the fowlers, carrying a dozen of the