They found the vines full of blossoms, promising a beautiful crop in June, and while strolling along the bank of the stream they suddenly came upon a quail's nest in which twenty-five eggs were just hatching out. As the quail runs the moment it breaks from the shell, the girls determined to take the little ones home and bring them up as they did their chickens. The old birds made a terrible fuss. They would run a short distance from the nest, and pretend to be very lame; apparently being hardly able to move. They thus tried to induce the girls to catch them--a ruse adopted by many other birds when their young ones are in danger. But Kate and Gertrude, who were well posted in the tricks of animals and birds, paid no attention to the antics of the old quails, but were intent on catching all of the little ones they could. Even then it was a hard job, for the baby quails run almost as fast as the parents, and hide in the grass where they lie quiet until all danger is past. They succeeded, however, in getting all but four of them, and walked hurriedly back to Errolstrath with the tender things in their aprons. "If I didn't know they were quails," said Kate, "I should think that they were young brown Leghorn chickens. Did you ever see such a resemblance, Gert?" "They do look exactly like the brown Leghorns, and do you know, Kate, that when I first saw a brood of Leghorns, I thought they were young quails." "I expect we shall have little trouble in raising them, for Jenny Campbell had as many as a dozen of them in her cellar all last summer. Her brother caught them as we did these, in the spring, just as they were coming out of their shells. They will eat small grain like chickens." "Well, we won't keep them in our cellar," said Gertrude; "we'll get Joe or Rob to build us a big cage out of lath, and then we can make them as tame as the mocking-birds." "Do you purpose to eat them?" inquired Kate. "Certainly; why not? Mamma and papa love them broiled on toast, and so do I. I don't expect to make such pets of them that when the time comes to eat them, I shall think so much of them that I can't do it; and you must not either, Kate." The girls arrived safely at the ranche with their charge, and Joe being begged to make a cage, set about it at once, and had it ready in less than an hour. The birds were put in it, and it was set on the veranda, where the little things could get plenty of air and sunlight. They picked up millet seed as readily as an old chicken, when Gertrude threw in a handful to them. In a few days they were contented in their confinement and became very tame.