Unexpectedly my wish was granted. In my dooryard, in the morning, when the blood-red sun rose out of the mists of dawn, I found poor Jim, torn and mangled and irretrievably dead, lying beside the empty milk-pan. He had been slain by Hoot-Mon, who, after eating as much as he could, had sailed away with beak and claws dripping, to wait for darkness and further feasting.

Even if Jim had not been so very dead I could not have saved him, for, in the words of a rival Unnaturalist, “there are no hospitals for sick Crows.”

Poor Jim Crow! Time has softened your misdemeanours with its kindly touch and my memory of you is a pleasant one!

HOOP-LA

When you meet a Fox, there are nine surprises. Five of them are his and the other four are yours. You may be looking for him, but he is not looking for you; consequently, he is more surprised than you are.

The following Summer, when I went to my cabin, I found it occupied. By this time I should have been accustomed to such things, but, strangely enough, I was not. To make it worse, the new occupant was not one I could turn out, being a relation. He had been a distant relation hitherto, but was now a near one.

Our family has intermarried a great deal with the descendants of European royalties, and Uncle Antonio was of the great and well-known family of the Cæsars, who, if my readers will remember, used to rank high in Rome. The line of descent was somewhat blurred, it is true, but Uncle had a Roman nose and was given to roaming about the country.

By profession, he was a musician—one of those rarely talented people whose genius is infinitely above such minor details as technique. Rubenstein, according to his biographers, used to make bad mistakes in reading his own music, and nearly everyone who has played him has, at some time or other, followed in his gifted footsteps.

Uncle was another Rubenstein, as regards the mistakes. His soul, lifted above all mundane things, soared to meet the thought of the composer, and his fingers stumbled over the keys. This would not have bothered some people, but Uncle was sensitive and it annoyed him, so at length he had an instrument especially made to suit his own needs.

It was an organ of the regulation type, small and compact, yet with a glorious volume of tone that would have delighted Wagner. Connected with the interior by a wonderfully scientific system of levers, was the motive power. The superior form 

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