so that they looked wrathy as they stretched their necks and quavered
in those bags. Captain Markley and I both burst out laughing, but Mrs.
Gunning explained it all seriously.

"They eat their eggs," says she; "so I tie hoods on them until I have
collected the eggs for the day."

I remember some were clawing their head-gear, trying alternate feet, and
two determined hens were trying to peck each other free. But they wore
generally resigned, and we might have grown so after the first minute,
if it hadn't been for the rooster.

Captain Markley roared, and I leaned against the lower part of the
block-house and held my sides. That long-legged, awkward, high-stepping
Shanghai cock was dressed like a man in a suit of clothes--all but a
hat. His coat-sleeves extended over his wings, and when he flapped them
to crow, and stuck his claws out of his trousers-legs, I wept tears on
my handkerchief. Mrs. Gunning talked straight ahead without paying
any attention to our laughter. If it ever had been funny to her it had
ceased to be so. She had not brought Captain Markley there to amuse him.

"Look at that Shanghai rooster now," says she. "I brought him up from
the South. I put him among the hens and they picked all his feathers
off. He was as bare, captain, as your hand. He was literally hen-pecked.
First one would step up to him and pull out a feather; then another; and
he, poor fool, did nothing but cower against the fence. It never seemed
to enter his brain-pan he could put a stop to the torture. There he
was, without a feather to cover himself with, and the cool autumn nights
coming on. So I took some gray cloth and made him these clothes. He
would have been picked to the bone if I hadn't. But they put spunk
into him. That Shanghai rooster has found out he has to assert himself,
captain, and he does assert himself."

I saw Captain Markley turn red, and I knew he wished the sentinel wasn't
standing guard a few feet away in front of that block-house.

She might have let him alone after she had given him that thrust, and
gone on to her house, and said good-bye in the usual way. But just as he
was helping me down it happened that Juliana and Dr. Mc-Curdy appeared
through the rear sally-port, which they must have reached by skirting
the wall instead of crossing the drill-field. As soon as Mrs. Gunning
saw them she stiffened, and clubbed her umbrella at Captain Markley
again. He couldn't get away, so he stood his ground.

"See