Solomon or Shebaf 



guileless to conceal his feeling and to feign indif- 

 ference, he put on his courting crest, shook out 

 his plumage, and danced a "buck and wing." He 

 had supposed, you see, that he had found a will- 

 ing partner. Not for some time did he realize 

 that she had failed to join him and that he was 

 executing a pas sevl. Whether he was clumsy, 

 loutish, less skilled than some earlier acquaint- 

 ance, I do not know. In any case he had put 

 his heart into the dance and she had fled. 



Were that all, it would be a trite story — 

 scarcely worth the telling. The pathos lies in the 

 memory she left behind. For had she loved 

 Harry, it would have been his duty, according to 

 the strange marriage vows of his own tribe, to 

 relieve her of maternal cares. He, not she, would 

 have had to build the nest and hover and keep 

 warm the eggs. And deep down in Harry's con- 

 sciousness, she had stirred all his paternal feeling. 

 He wanted children — if not his own, then those 

 of some one else. 



He sought the farmyard where the chances of 

 adoption seemed most likely. The hens, settled 

 to their duty, he drove from off their nests. Their 

 [123] 



