MAY. 
WILD DENTISTRY. 
Ngee orchard was very still in the moon- 
light. The gnarled boles of the apple- 
trees stood out gaunt and silver-gray, the grass 
was dull-gray plush, the hedge a smudged line 
of blue-black ink, and the high wall of the 
cow-shed, which flanked the orchard, another 
pool of ink. 
The chicken-coop among the apple-trees 
stood out very plainly. The front of it was 
covered by a board, against which a brick had 
been placed. It was quite alone, that coop, 
for it contained the first brood of chickens of 
the year and their mother—early chickens 
they were. 
There was nothing else alive in that orchard, 
it seemed, or in all that still, frosty, moonlit 
world—nothing. 
Then what had appeared to be the upright 
stump of the bough of a cherry-tree suddenly 
fell without sound, miraculously sprouted 
wings, and sailed away in the shape of a 
disgusted owl. 
And at the same moment the gnome-like, 
