The military training of these young men had taught them to make the most of every reverse, and if possible to turn defeat into victory; and so they fell to work and plucked off a great quantity of soft feathers, and all the next day was spent in skinning the breasts, which they would find some way to cure and make into covers for their beds, or even garments for themselves. A portion of the carcases they tried out over the fire, and made a brave supply of oil for the mill, and then the poor remains were thrown over the cliff. The six old roosters remained alive in a crippled and deformed condition, some having three stumpy toes to a foot, and others two or one, on which they wabbled and limped about with molting feathers and abbreviated combs, the most dismal-looking fowls that can be imagined. The old yellow patriarch was paralyzed as to his legs and thighs, so that he was nearly as helpless as a tailor's goose, and had to be set about and fed like an infant. For the five red ones Bromley fixed a roost in the corner of the house behind the door, where some of them had to be helped up at night, and where they crowed hoarsely in the morning, over against the window of the stained-glass flag. Philip, in pursuance of a brilliant idea which he kept to himself, selected a dozen of the new-laid eggs which they happened to have in the house, and put them away in a warm place where no breath of frost could reach them. When the first warm days of spring came, he made a nest of corn-husks and feathers on a sunny shoulder of rock. Into this nest he put the eggs he had saved, and covered them with the old paralyzed yellow rooster, who had never been known to move from where he was set down since the night he was frozen on the limb. The indignant old bird certainly gave Philip a look of remonstrance as he left him in this degrading position; and when Philip came a few hours later to feed him, this cunning old rooster, strengthened perhaps by his outraged feelings, had in some way managed to turn over so that he lay on his side on the rock, his helpless claws extending stiffly over the nest. As often as he was set back he managed to accomplish the same feat, when if left on the ground he would sit for a week where he was placed, as stolid and immovable as a decoy-duck. The loss of the fowls had left an abundance of corn for planting; but when the warm days came after this trying winter, it was a queer sight to see the three soldiers walking about the top of the mountain, with their five sad roosters wabbling at their heels. CHAPTER XXI A SCRAP OF PAPER