d
Schmetz, "the demon hens of _le docteur_ Geddes are with their paws
upturning! They upturn with rapidity and completeness, led by a
shameless hog of a rooster. Is it the orders of you that I devastate
those fowls, Mademoiselle?"

Schmetz was furiously angry, and small wonder. Those had been choice
bulbs, some of which he had presented me from his own cherished
store--freesias, daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, and the starred
narcissus, "such as Proserpine let fall, from Dis's wagon."

"Oh, our flowers!" wailed Alicia, springing to her feet; "and we
counting on those bulbs for Christmas!"

I shut Freeman's diary with a snap. Hens were more immediate.

"Put it in the drawer of the library table," called Alicia, running
out with Schmetz at her heels. "We'll read it to-night."

When I had done so, closing the door after me, I too ran outside,
where some enormous black-and-white hens, led by the biggest rooster
I had ever seen, were completing the utter destruction of our
flower bed.

We charged down upon them, and they ran to and fro, after the stupid
fashion of fowls. Back and forth Alicia, Schmetz, and I chased those
brutes; but Adam stood with folded hands, looking on from a safe and
sane distance. He refused to have anything to do with Geddes fowls
in ol' Mis' Scarlett's yard. Just then the huge rooster ran into my
skirts, all but upsetting me. It was the work of a strenuous moment
to seize him by the wings and so hold him.

Left to their own devices, the hens scuttled back to their own
domain through a break in the palings on our side of the hedge,
while in my hands the rooster squawked and plunged and kicked and
struggled; it was like trying to hold a feathered hyena.

I was very angry. I had lost my bulb bed. I couldn't wring the neck
of the raider, much as I should have liked to do so, but with an arm
made strong by a just and righteous rage I lifted that big brute
high above my head and hurled him over into his own yard. He sailed
through the air like a black and white plane.

"_Damn! Oh, damn!_" said somebody on the other side of the hedge.
There was a horrible grunt, as of one getting all the wind knocked
out of him, a scuffle, and the squawks of the big rooster, to which
the hens dutifully added a deafening chorus.

"The brute--has just about--murdered me!" grunted Doctor Richard
Geddes.

We stood in stricken silence. Swiftly, noiselessly, Uncle Adam faded
from sight, putting a solid section of Hyn