If Brud and Sister had deliberately planned a revenge on the old man who had forced them into exile and temporary obedience, they could not have chosen anything which would have hurt him worse than their next prank. Their wild chase down the lane had been brought to a sudden stop by the sight of the lordly peacock, strutting back and forth in the barn-yard, his beautiful tail spread wide in the sun. They climbed up on the gate to watch it, and, hanging over the top bar, admired it in almost breathless ecstasy for several minutes. The iridescent shimmer of the gorgeous eyes in its tail started a dispute. "That's why you can't ever catch a peacock," Brud asserted, "'cause with all those eyes in its tail it can see you coming up behind it." "Aw, goosey," contradicted Nancy, "it sees with its two little _head_ eyes. Those feather eyes in its tail can't see." "They can!" "They can't!" The two words were bandied back and forth, the dispute promising to go on indefinitely, till Brud's triumphant, "Ten million times _can_," was answered by Nancy's final, "Million billion times _can't_! So there." "We'll prove it," was Brud's next taunt. "Try and see if you can catch him." "All right," was the willing assent. "And if the feathers come out of his tail as easy as they did out of Mis' Williams' red rooster, won't that old man be mad!" In the meantime Sammy had gone into the house to hunt among his possessions for a certain corncob pipe, to take the place of the clay one just broken. The mantel-shelf in his room was as crowded as the corner of an old junk shop, so it took some time for him to find what he was searching for. He had taken it down and was slowly filling it, when the sound of a wild commotion in the barn-yard made him hurry to the door. Turkeys, guineas, ducks, hens,--everything that could gobble or flutter or squawk, were doing their utmost to attract someone's attention. And the cause of it all, or, rather, the two causes, were standing by the watering-trough, comparing the spoils of the chase. They had crept up behind the peacock, despite his thousand eyes, and caught him by the tail. Each proudly clutched a handful of long, trailing feathers, and the bird, miserably conscious that his glory had been torn from him, had taken refuge under the corn-crib. "You outrageous little Hittites!" roared old Sammy, coming upon them suddenly and seeing the feathers. Then a real chase began. A little while later, Mary paused in the middle of a sentence to say, "Listen! Didn't that sound like the children crying or calling?" Mrs. Barnaby, who was slightly deaf, shook her head. "No, I think not. Anyhow, Sammy is looking after them. He won't let them come to any real harm. What was it we were talking about? Oh, yes! Those heirloom candlesticks." More than an hour afterward a shadow darkened the doorway for an instant as Sammy strode past it on his way across the porch. "Mr. Bradford," called Mary. "Do you know where the children are?"