"The next moment he got a great surprise. The red hen hurled herself at him with such violence that, although the bars protected him, he was almost knocked over. He received a smart jab from her beak, and her bristling feathers came through the bars in a fashion that rather took away his breath. He was furious. Again and again he strove to force his way in, now on one side, now on the other. But always that fiery bunch of beak and claw and feathers seemed to burst in his face. Had it not been for the bars, indeed, the red hen would have given him an awful mauling. But this, of course, he was too self-confident to suspect. With characteristic obstinacy, he kept up the struggle for fully five minutes, while the terrified chickens filled the air with their pipings and the hen screamed herself hoarse. Then, feeling a little sore, to be sure, but very certain that he had impressed the hen, he strolled off to look for some delicacy less inaccessible than that piece of turnip. "At this point the one-eyed gander came waddling up from the goose pond. He was lonely and bad-tempered, for his two wives had been killed by a fox that spring, and the Boy had not yet found him a new mate. Young Grumpy looked at the big gray bird and recalled the little unpleasantness of their previous encounter. "'Oh, ho!' said he to himself--if woodchucks ever _do_ talk to themselves--'I'll just give that ugly chap beans, like I did the other day.' And he went scurrying across the yard to see about it. "To his surprise, the gander paid him no attention whatever. You see, he was on the side of the gander's blind eye. "Now, Young Grumpy was so puzzled by this indifference that, instead of rushing right in and biting the haughty bird, he sat up on his haunches at a distance of some five or six feet and began to squeak his defiance. The gander turned his head. Straightway he opened his long yellow bill, gave vent to a hiss like the steam from an escape pipe, stuck out his snaky neck close to the ground, lifted his broad gray-and-white wings, and charged. "Before Young Grumpy had time even to wonder if he had been imprudent or not, the hard elbow of one of those wings caught him a blow on the ear and knocked him head over heels. At the same time it swept him to one side, and the gander rushed on straight over the spot where he had been sitting. "Young Grumpy picked himself up, startled and shaken. The thing had been so unexpected. He would have rather liked to run away. But he was too angry and too obstinate. He just sat up on his haunches again, intending to make another and more successful attack as soon as his head stopped buzzing. "The gander, meanwhile, was surprised also. He could not understand how his enemy had got out of the way so quickly. He stared around, and then, turning his one eye skyward, as if he thought Young Grumpy might have gone that way, he trumpeted a loud _honka-honka-honk--kah_.