Redruff 



enormously, they one and all grew thinner and 

 thinner. The mother was the last to be affected. 

 But when it came, it came as hard on her — a 

 ravenous hunger, a feverish headache, and a 

 wasting weakness. She never knew the cause. 

 She could not know that the dust of the much- 

 used dust-bath, that her true instinct taught her 

 to mistrust at first, and now again to shun, was 

 sown with parasitic worms, and that all of the 

 family were infested. 



No natural impulse is without a purpose. 

 The mother-bird's knowledge of healing was 

 only to follow natural impulse. The eager, fever- 

 ish craving for something, she knew not what, 

 led her to eat, or try, everything that looked eat- 

 able and to seek the coolest woods. And there 

 she found a deadly sumach laden with its poison 

 fruit. A month ago she would have passed it 

 by, but now she tried the unattractive berries. 

 The acrid burning juice seemed to answer some 

 strange demand of her body ; she ate and ate, 

 and all her family joined in the strange feast of 

 physic. No human doctor could have hit it 

 better ; it proved a biting, drastic purge, the 



^adful secret foe was downed, the danger 

 3i7 





%11 



/TO 



H 



