A short time was passed by mother and son in tenderness, wild and strange, but striking; she kissed his eyes and his lips, and held him first at a distance, then close to her heart; she put her hands upon his curly head, and raised her look upwards, where hope and thankfulness seek Heaven. Then she asked all that had happened; and with simple prattle the boy told her how he had seen the bull attack the old General, and had run to frighten it. And the woman laughed and cried at her child's courage and his folly. But when he went on to say--after relating how he had found himself flying in the air,--"Then that man came up, and caught him by the tail, and whacked him till he tumbled down," she turned to Chandos, and kissed his hand too. "But the best of it all, mammy," cried the boy, who entered into the spirit of his own story, "was when farmer Thorpe came up, and bullied the two men as they were looking at me; and how that one told him he would whack him as he had whacked the bull, if he did not cut his quids." "So farmer Thorpe bullied, did he?" cried the woman, "He's a tiger: but snakes even bite tigers." And she added something in a low voice, which sounded to Chandos's ear, "Let him look to his farm-yard." Certain it is that the next night passed distressfully to the poultry of farmer Thorpe. When he looked in the morning, where many a turkey had been fattening for Christmas, and capons and fowls strutted proud, he found feathers but not fowls. The geese, indeed, were spared, Heaven only knows why; but from the imperial black bubblyjock down to Dame Partlet's youngest daughter, all the rest were gone. Yet there was a large fierce dog in the yard, as fierce as his master or his master's bull. There are, however, always in this world _moyens de parvenir_; and the fierce dog was found to have made himself very comfortable during the cold wintry night with feathers which must have been plucked off his tender flock under his nose. What a picture of "A faithless guardian of a charge too good!" However, putting the morality of the thing out of the question, the fact is curious, as the first recorded instance of a dog using a feather-bed. The whole of the last paragraph is a huge parenthesis; and as it is not easy to get back again after such an inordinate digression without a jump or an hiatus, we will take the latter, and end the chapter here. CHAPTER IX. "There now, my good woman, you have hugged the boy enough," said Mr. Woodyard; "you have kissed my hand, and the young man's; and the next thing is to put the child to bed, and keep him there for the next three days. I will see that he is taken care of; but mind you don't give him any of your neighbours' hens, or hares, or partridges; not because he or his stomach would care a straw whether they were stolen or not; but because he must not eat animal food, however it is come by." "Mayn't I take him up to my own people?" asked the woman, with an anxious look.