We all three stood still in the yard to hear what they would do. First there came a loud cluck, cluck,' and then a great scream,

and poor Bob ran out of the hole in the shed door in a great fright, with his tail and wings all the wrong way. He ran up to us,

and two or three of the chicks came out at the same time, and gave poor Bob some sharp pecks. They would have had a great fight, but Kate caught Bob up in her arms, and took him back to the house.

'I hate the cross old hen and her chicks,' she said, as she gave Bob a kiss. 'Poor dear Bob, you shall stay with us till you die, you shall.'

We did not think when she said that how soon poor Bob would die.

I think the pecks the hen gave him must have hurt him more than we knew at the time, for from that day he grew ill. He would not eat, but sat close to the fire, with his head on one side, or in one of our laps, and now and then gave a cry as if some thing hurt him. We did all we could to make him

F

well; we brought him lots of nice things to eat, and made him a soft warm bed to lie in by the fire, but it was all no good. Poor Bob got more and more weak each day till at last he could not stand on his poor lame leg at all, but just lay in his bed. And one day when we woke we found him there quite dead.

The death of dear Bob was such a grief to us that we all shed tears. I think Jack did as well as Kate and me, though he did try to hide them. We put the poor bird in a box, and dug a hole in the ground and laid the box in it, and then put back the earth on the top. Then we got a board, on which Tom wrote in big words, 'Poor Bob.' We stuck the board in the ground at the top of the grave, and that was the end of poor Bob."

The next day it was still so wet that there could be no play out of doors, but just a short run now and then when it did not rain, for half an hour or so.

Late in the day John from next door came in. He said he found it so dull all by him

self that he thought he would come and have a chat with his young friends.

They were quite glad to see him, and they all got round him and had a good romp; then they had tea, and then they said that John must tell them a tale.

"Let me see if I can think of a tale,” said John, as he put he put his hand to his head. He thought for a short time, and then he told them the tale of—

boy whose name was Dan, and in

all this wide world

poor Dan had no one to love him.

When but a

few years old he

had been left to

the care of an

old dame that the

folks round said was a witch, for she

was so old and so deaf, and she had

such a long nose, and such a long chin the point of her chin and the point of her nose came so near that they said she could crack nuts with them; she had no teeth, poor old

soul, so I do not think she could crack nuts. Her hair was quite grey, and her back was bent, so that she could not walk with-out a stick. When she went down the roads the rude boys would call out, "There goes the old witch! There goes the old witch!" There was one good thing, she was so deaf that she could not hear what they said, and the rude words did not hurt her; but some bad boys, who were worse than the rest, went so far as to throw stones at the poor old soul, who could not help her self, and that would put her in a rage, and she would shake her stick at them. This made the rude boys laugh, for they knew she could not strike them; they could run out of her way, but she could not go for two steps with-out the help of her stick.

Well, this Dame Broom was poor, and had no one to work for her, so it was thought she might have Dan to take charge of, and earn some-thing that way. So when Dan was but a few years old he came to live with Dame Broom in her hut on the road side.