m or
invented on the spur of the moment, through the extreme urgency of the
case, alike failed.

The orphans presented an entirely unique problem in the rearing of
children. In the first place, the community was completely taken aback
by their unexpected character. Not one of them at all conformed to the
picture of a forsaken child, as conceived by the village. The Elmbrook
ideal was the sort that languished on the front page of the
Sunday-school library books. It was quiet and pensive and hungry, and
gave all its meager earnings to a small invalid brother or drunken
father. But the Sawyer orphans were neither pensive nor appealing.
There was a defiant belligerency about them that stifled the avenues of
pity and put one on the defensive. They were wild and gay, and
uproarious, too, and with the exception of Tim, the eldest, they were
strong and robust. He certainly looked as though he had been starved,
body and soul; but his other unorphan-like qualities were so obtrusive
that he was looked upon as the biggest counterfeit of the crowd.

During school hours the three eldest were kept in some sort of
conformity to law and order by the strong hand of the Duke of
Wellington; but at home and abroad they were a law unto themselves, and
kept the whole community in a state of apprehension, like people living
near the crater of an active volcano.

Their life had been largely spent in the slum district of a crowded
city, and the change to the freedom of the Oro fields and woods was
almost too much for the orphans. After school hours they all, with one
consent, went mad, and ranged far and wide over hill and dale, until
Granny Long's old hands grew weary readjusting the telescope. Then
when she did catch sight of them it was only to be grossly insulted;
for whenever the small scalawags guessed they were within range of the
spyglass they would stand in line, and go through frightful contortions
of the face and body, expressive of contempt for the instrument and
everything behind it.

Wherever the orphans went, depredations of all sorts followed. They
chased the neighbors' cows from the fields out to the road, and the
pigs from the road into the fields. They climbed trees and stole
birds' nests. They dammed the creek and flooded Cameron's pasture.
They teased Sandy McQuarry's old ram until it was mad with rage, and
butted the ex-elder all over the barnyard. They smashed windows, and
broke down fences, and, in fact,