And I did catch him. I killed him, too, in spite of the great scarcity of the creatures. Yet I was sorry, and, perhaps, too hasty; for catching him near the coop was no proof. He might have wandered this way by chance. I should have put him in a bag and carried him down to Valley Swamp and liberated him. That day, while my neighbor was gone with his milk wagon, I slipped through the back pasture and hung the two traps up on their nail in the can-house. I went anxiously to the chicken-yard the next morning. All forty came out to be counted. It must have been the skunk, I was thinking, as I went on into the brooding-house, where six hens were still sitting. One of the hens was off her nest and acting queerly. Her nest was empty! Not a chick, not a bit of shell! I lifted up the second hen in the row, and of her thirteen eggs, only three were left. The hen next to her had five eggs; the fourth hen had four. Forty chickens gone (counting them before they were hatched), all in one night. I hitched up the horse and drove thoughtfully to the village, where I bought six skunk-traps. “Goin’ skunkin’ some, this spring,” the store man remarked, as he got me the traps, adding, “Well, they’s some on ’em. I’ve seen a scaac’ty of a good many commodities, but I never yet see a scaac’ty o’ skunks.” I didn’t stop to discuss the matter, being a trifle uncertain just then as to my own mind, but hurried home with my six traps. Six, I thought, would do to begin with, though I really had no conception of the number of cats (or skunks) it had taken to dispose of the three and one third dozens of eggs (at three dollars a dozen!) in a single night. Early that afternoon I covered each sitting hen so that even a mouse could not get at her, and fixing the traps, I distributed them about the brooding-house floor; then, as evening came on, I pushed a shell into each barrel of the gun, took a comfortable perch upon a keg in the corner of the house, and waited. I had come to stay. Something was going to happen. And something did happen, away on in the small hours of the morning, namely--one little skunk. He walked into a trap while I was dozing. He seemed pretty small hunting then, but he looms larger now, for I have learned several more things about skunks than I knew when I had the talk with my neighbor: I have learned, for one thing, that forty eggs, soon to hatch, are just an average meal for the average half-grown skunk. The catching of these two thieves put an end to the depredations, and I began again to exhibit in my dreams, when one night, while sound asleep, I heard a frightful commotion among the hens. I did the hundred-yard dash to the chicken-house in my unforgotten college form, but just in time to see the skunk cross the moonlit line into the black woods ahead of me. He had wrought dreadful havoc among the thoroughbreds. What devastation a skunk, single-handed, can achieve in a pen of young chickens beggars all description.