he
had never seen a _hen swim_. He had seen ducks do it, and swans, and
geese, but he never remembered to have seen a HEN swim.

What was the reason? Didn't they know how? or _wouldn't_ they do it?

Hal was resolved to get at the bottom of that problem without delay; so
he jumped up and chased one round till he fell down and tore his
jacket, and the hen flew up in a tree.

Then he tried for the speckled widow; _she_ of course was too sharp for
him.

At last he secured the brown one, and hiding her under his jacket
started for the "creek," about a quarter of a mile off. He told the
hen, going along, that if she didn't know how to swim, it was high time
she did, and that he was going to try her any how; the hen cocked up
her eye but said nothing, though she had her thoughts.

The fact was she never had been in the habit of going out of the
barn-yard, without asking leave of the rooster, who was a regular old
"Blue Beard;" and she knew very well that he wouldn't scratch her up
another worm, for a good twelve-month, for being absent without leave.
So she dug her claws into Hal's side, every now and then, and tried to
peck him with her bill, but Hal told her it was no use, for go into
that creek she _should_.

Well, he got to the creek at last, and stood triumphantly on a little
bank just over it. He took a good grip of his hen, and then lifted up
his arm to give her a nice toss into the water.

He told her that now she was to consider herself a _duck_, instead of a
_hen_, (what a _goose_!) then over he went _splash_ into the water
_himself_. The question was not _now_ whether the _hen_ could swim, but
whether _he_ could; he floundered round and round, and screeched like a
little bedlamite, and was just thinking of the last fib he told, when
his brother Zedekiah came along and fished him out.

Hal prefers now to try his experiments on his father's door-step; as to
the hen, poor chicken-hearted thing! she didn't dare to show her wet
feathers to her lordly old rooster; so she smuggled herself into
neighbor Jones' barn-yard and laid her eggs wherever it suited the old
farmer, for the sake of her board.

KNUD IVERSON.

I suppose that every boy and girl who reads my "Little Ferns," has
heard or read of martyrs. You have all owned a primer with the picture
of "John Rogers," who was burned alive for being a good man; then, you
remember "Stephen," of Bible memory, who was stoned to death, for the
same reason.