308 Sporting Sketches 



him the exact line to follow. Instantly he straight- 

 ened up, and for the first time attempted the answer- 

 ing cry. It wasn't much of a cry rather feeble 

 and a bit broken-reedy, and suggestive of a whining 

 " Thankee-than-kee ! " but it was the best he was 

 capable of. Then he ran like a mouse going through 

 grass. 



Every now and then he stopped to call and re- 

 ceive instructions, and from various places he could 

 hear the others like himself steering by signal. 

 When finally " Ka-loi-hee ! " again sounded, Robert 

 squeaked hasty acknowledgments and sped straight 

 as a bullet to where his mother stood. Half-a-dozen 

 of the others were with her, and presently the rest 

 came sprinting from various directions. In her own 

 way she counted them, and the moment the tally 

 was complete all trace of anxiety left her, and she 

 cautiously led the way to some secluded foraging- 

 ground. 



Weeks passed and the young Whites, with one 

 exception, throve amazingly. Robert himself was 

 nearly as large as his mother. His washy-looking, 

 mottled suit had fallen from him scrap by scrap 

 among briers, grass, and at the dusting-place ; the 

 leaden gray of his throat had changed to almost pure 

 white ; in fact, in his mother's eyes, he was painfully 

 like his father that mysterious father whom he 

 never had seen, that is, so far as he knew. 



In time the conditions changed. A great storm 

 arose ; there was a tremendous clatter in the air and 

 Farmer Brown and other monsters raged and shouted 

 in the fields from morn till dusk. Then the awful 

 disturbance passed, but it had wrought ruin far as 



