n-food?" asked Billings, taking up a
package and reading from the label. "'Guaranteed to make hens lay in all
kinds of weather, the coldest as well as the warmest' That's just what
you want, Pap."

"Well," said Pap, "I been keepin' hens off and on for nigh forty year,
and I ain't ever seen any o' that stuff that was ary good; but I got
to have eggs or bust, so I'll take a can o' that stuff. But I ain't no
hopes of it, Billings, I ain't no hopes."

His pessimism was well founded. The cold spell was too much even for the
best hen-food to conquer. No eggs rewarded him.

One evening he was sitting in Billings', smoking his pipe and thinking.
He had been thinking for some time, and at length a sparkle came into
his eyes, and he knocked the ashes from his pipe and arose.

"Billings," he said, "mix me up about a nickel's wuth o' corn-meal,
and a nickel's wuth o' flour, and"--he hesitated a moment and then
chuckled--"and a nickel's wuth o' wash-blue."

"For heaven's sake, Pap," said Billings, "have ye gone plumb crazy?"

"No, I ain't," said Pap. "I ain't lost all my brains yit, nor I ain't
gone plumb crazy yit, neither. That's a hen food I invented."

"Hen-food!" exclaimed Billings. "You don't 'low that will make hens lay,
do you, Pap?"

"I ain't advisin' no one to use it that don't want to," said Pap, "but I
bet you I'm a-goin' to feed that to my hens"; and he chuckled again.

"Pap," said Billings, "you're up to some be-devilment, sure! What is
it?"

"You jist keep your hand on your watch till you find out," answered Pap,
and he took his package and went home.

"Sally," he said when he entered the house, "I got some hen-food now
that's bound to make them hens lay, sure."

She took the package and opened it.

"For law's sake, Pap," she said, "what kind o' hen-food is that? It's
blue!"

"Yes," said Pap, looking at it closely, "it IS blue, ain't it? It's a
mixture of my own. I ain't been raisin' hens off an' on fer forty year
for nothin'. You got to study the hen, Sally, and think about her. Why
don't a hen lay in cold weather? 'Cause the weather makes the hen cold.
This will make her warm. You jist try it. Give 'em a spoonful apiece an'
I reckon they'll lay. It don't look like much, but I bet you anything
it'll make them hens lay."

"I don't believe it," she snapped, "and I'll hold you to that bet,
sure's my names Briggs." But the next day she gave them the allotted
portion.

That evening when Pap Briggs kno