nd our chairs, and was
for the first time in my life lifted on the wings of prayer and carried off
up somewhere I hadn't been before. As Uncle Cradd's sonorous words of love
and rejoicing over our return rolled forth in the twilight, I crouched
against father's shoulder, and I think the spirit of my Grandmother
Craddock, whom I had heard indulging in a Methodist form of vocal rejoicing
which is called a shout, was about to manifest itself through me when I was
brought to earth and to my feet by a long, protracted, and alarmed appeal
sent forth in the voice of the Golden Bird.

"Keep us and protect us through the night with Your grace. Ahmen! Why
didn't you put those chickens out of the way of skunks and weasels, Rufus,
you old scoundrel," rolled out Uncle Cradd's deep voice, dropping with
great harmony from the sublime to the domestic.

Then, with Rufus at my heels, I literally flew through the back door of the
house towards the sound of distress that had come from that direction. In
front of a rambling old barn, which was silvered by the crescent that hung
over its ridge-pole, stood the chariot, and at its door, with Mr. G. Bird
in his arms, I saw that man Adam.

"He didn't recognize my first touch," came across the moonbeams in a voice
as fluty as the original Pan's, and mingled with friendly chuckles and
clucks from the entire Bird family as they felt the caress of long hands
among them. I was so ruffled myself that I felt in need of soothing; so I
came across the light and into the black shadow of the old coach.

"Oh, I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come!" I exclaimed.

After my ardent exclamation of welcome to Pan I stood still for fear he
would vanish into the moonlight, because with his litheness and the eerie
locks of hair that even in the silvering radiance showed a note of crimson
cresting over his ears, he looked exactly as if he had come out of the
hollow in some oak-tree.

"I thought you might feel that way about it," he answered me, or rather I
think that is what he said, because he was crooning to me and the Ladies
Bird at the same time, and with a mixture of epitaphs and endearments that
I didn't care to untangle. "There, there, lovely lady, don't be scared; it
is going to be all right," he soothed, as he lifted one of the fluffy
biddies and tucked her under his arm.

"Oh, I am so glad you think so," I claimed the remark by exclaiming, while
she made her claim by a contented littl