evening more than due, he might be
seen dodging behind fences, crawling around barns, stalking along in the
high grass, with a long single-barreled old gun, trying to get a shot at
the black thieves of crows that were forever at work on his old, sandy
farm.

'What cause have you, my aged friend,' Brother Hornblower once said to
him, '_What_ cause have _you_ to molest these birds, as 'toil not,
neither do they spin'?'

'I tell yer what,' answered the Squire, shaking his head with savage
jerks, 'come down to my house ary moruin' airly, you'll hear _caws_!'

Brother Hornblower smiled grimly and walked gently away, after that, to
get the evening paper at the grocery-post-office. He set his face
against jokes--unless they were serious ones.

Whether it was Brother Hornblower's words, or more crows than usual, the
neighbors around Squire Price's farm were regaled for two days after the
above talk, with such constant explosions of gunpowder that it was
surmised the Squire must have bought 'a hull kag o' powder, and got some
feller to help him shoot.' The consequence of this energy was, that the
persecuted devil's-canaries flew away to other farms where powder was
scarce-first and foremost descending in flocks on Brother Hornblower's
lands, and digging up his young corn--it was in the month of May--until
even _he_ found cause to go at these birds as don't spin; for he found
out that they toiled most laboriously. Being a man of peaceful
disposition, and opposed to the use of fire-arms, he thought over a plan
by which fire-logs might be used with great advantage to his own
benefit, by destroying a large number of crows at one fell blow. How he
succeeded in this _fell_-blow, was told a few evenings afterward in the
grocery-post-office, by young Tyler, a promising youth who had not, as
they say of other sad dogs, 'quite got his set yet,' that is, attained
completion in figure and carriage. Seated on the edge of a barrel
half-filled with corn, and cutting a piece of pine-wood to one sharp
point only to be followed by another sharp point, he was talking to
another youth in a desultory manner, about his intentions 'to go by
water,' in old Bizzle's schooner, next trip she took, when Squire Price
came in to get his daily newspaper, _The Beantown Democrat_.

'You bin givin' them crows partikler hail, hain't you, Squire?' asked
Tyler the youthful.

'Wal, about as much as they kin kerry,' answered the Squire. 'They
hain't bin squaw