Ransey placed the two turkey's eggs on a shelf near the little gable window. One pane of glass was broken, and was stuffed with hay. Well, the Admiral had been watching the boy, and as soon as his back was turned, it didn't take the bird long to pull out that hay. "O 'Ansey, 'ook! 'ook!" cried Babs. It was too late, however, for looking to do any good. For the same yard of neck that had, a few minutes before, appeared round the edge of the doorway, was now thrust through the broken pane, and only one turkey's egg was left. Babs looked very sad. She considered for a bit, then said solemnly,-- "'Oo mus' have the odel [other] tu'key's _egg_. You is dooder nor me." But Ransey didn't have it. He contented himself with bread and milk. And so the two mitherless bairns had breakfast. Book 1--CHAPTER TWO. LIFE IN THE WOODS. I trust that, from what he has already seen and heard of Ransey Tansey, the reader will not imagine I desire this little hero of mine to pose as a real saint. Boys should be boys while they have the chance. Alas, they shall grow up into men far too soon, and then they needn't go long journeys to seek for sorrow; they will find it near home. And now I think, reader, you and I understand each other, to some extent at all events. Though I believe he was always manly and never mean, yet, as his biographer, I am bound to confess that there was just as much monkey-mischief to the square inch about Ransey Tansey, as about any boy to whom I have ever had the honour of being introduced. It was said of the immortal George Washington that when a boy at school he climbed out of a bedroom window and robbed a wall fruit tree, because the other boys were cowards and afraid to do so. But George refused to eat even a bite of one of these apples himself. I think that Ransey Tansey could have surpassed young Washington; for not only would he have taken the apples, but eaten his own share of them afterwards. To do him justice, however, I must state that on occasions when his father went in the barge to a distant town on business, as he had been now for over a week, Ransey being left in charge of his tiny sister and the whole establishment, the sense of his great responsibility kept him entirely free from mischief. Now a very extraordinary thing happened on this particular morning-- Ransey Tansey received a letter. The postman was sulky, to say the least of it. "Pretty thing," he said, as he flung the letter with scant ceremony in through the open doorway; "pretty thing as I should have to come three-quarters of a mile round to fetch a letter to the likes o' you!" "Now, look 'ee here," said Ransey, "if ye're good and brings my letters every day, and hangs yer stockin' out at Christmas-time, I may put somethin' in it." "Gur long, ye ragged young nipper!" Ransey was dandling Babs upon his knee, but he now put her gently down beside the cat. Then he jumped up.