“Air ye turned a bodacious idjit, Skimp?” he cried, positively appalled by the audacity of the request. “I wouldn’t hev ye a-ondertakin’ ter play the fool with this hyar fiddle, fur”—he hesitated, but his manner swept away worlds of entreating bribes—“fur _nuthin’_.” The young rooster, finding that there was nothing upon the shelf except the water-pail and gourd, and hardly caring to appropriate them, had made up his mind to descend. After the manner of his kind, however, he teetered about on the edge of the shelf in some excitement, unable to determine just at what spot to attempt the leap. Twice or thrice he spread his bronzed red and yellow wings, stretched his neck, and bowed his body down—to rise up exactly where he was before. At last the adventurous fowl decided to trust himself to providence. With a squawk at his own temerity he fluttered awkwardly off the shelf, and almost alighted on the musician’s head, giving a convulsive clutch at it with his claws as he flopped past. There was a distressful whine from the fiddle-strings in Obadiah’s sudden perversion of the bow; he had forgotten all about the rooster on the shelf; he jumped back with a galvanic jerk, as he felt the fluttering wings about his head and the scrape of the yellow claws, and emitted a sharp cry of startled dismay. Bose, who had been lying close beside a clumsy wooden box on rockers, growled surlily, fixing a warning eye on the boy; then his voice rose into a gruff bark. There was no longer use in his keeping quiet and guarding the cradle. Beneath the quilts was a great commotion; the personage enveloped therein, although sleeping according to infantile etiquette with its head covered, had no mind to be thus eclipsed when broad awake. There presently emerged a pair of mottled fists, the red head of the Sawyer tribe, an indignant, frowning red face, and a howl so vigorous that it seemed almost visible. It had no accompaniment of tears, for the baby wept for rage rather than grief, and sorrow was the share of those who heard him. Mrs. Sawyer turned and looked reproachfully at the group on the porch. “’Twarn’t _me_, mam, ’twar the rooster ez woke the baby,” Obadiah exclaimed, seeking to exculpate himself. Bose was stretching himself to a surprising length, all his toe-nails elongated as he spread out his paws, and still half-growling and half-barking at Obadiah, the utterance complicated with a yawn. “’Twar the rooster,” reiterated Obadiah—“the rooster, an’—an’—Bose.” “’Twarn’t Bose!” exclaimed Skimpy, loyally. “Hesh up!” said the dulcet musician.