danger and the delay that they had caused. They helped with all their might to get the train through, and as they worked, silently listened to the repeated threats of the conductor.
At last, with a muttered something, the conductor kicked one of the turkeys into a fluttering heap beneath the engine, and, turning, commanded his crew to stand aside and let the engineer finish the rest of the flock.
The men got away from the track. Then, catching Herbert by the arm, George pointed along the train, and bending, made a tossing motion toward the top of the cars.
“Quick!” he whispered. “One on every car!” and stepping calmly back in front of the engine, he went down the opposite side of the long train.
As he passed the tender, he seized a big gobbler, and sent him with a wild throw up to the top of a low coal-car, just as Herbert, on his side, sent another fluttering up to the same perch. Both birds landed with a flap and a gobble that were heard by the other turkeys up and down the length of the train.
Instantly came a chorus of answering gobbles as every turkey along the track saw, in the failing light, that real, buildings – farmyard buildings – were here to roost on! And into the air they went, helped all along the train by the two boys, who were tossing them into the cars, or upon the loads of lumber, as fast as they could pass from car to car.
Luckily, the rails were sleety, and the mighty driving-wheels, spinning on the ice with their long load, which seemed to freeze continually to the track, made headway so slowly that the whole flock had come to roost upon the cars before the train was fairly moving.
Conductor and brakeman, hurrying back to board the caboose, were midway of the train before they noticed what was happening. How it was happening they did not see at all, so hidden were the movements of the two boys in the swirl of the blinding snow.
For just an instant the conductor checked himself. But it was too late to do anything. The train was moving, and he must keep it moving as fast as he could to the freight-yards ahead at the junction – the very yards where, even now, an empty car was waiting for the overdue turkeys.
As he ran on down the track and swung aboard the caboose, two other figures closed in behind the train. One of them, seizing the other by the arm, landed him safe upon the steps, and then shouted at him through the storm: —
“Certainly you shall! I’m safe enough! I’ll drive on to that old sawmill to-night. Feed ’em in the morning and wait for me! Good-by,” and as the wind carried his voice away, George Totman found himself staring after a ghost-white car that had vanished in the storm.
He was alone; but the thought of the great flock speeding on to the town ahead was company enough. Besides, he had too much to do, and to do quickly, to think of himself; for the snow was blocking his road, and the cold was getting at him. But how the wires overhead sang to him! How the sounding forest sang to him as he went back to give the horse a snatch of supper!
He was soon on the road, where the wind at his back and the tall trees gave him protection. The four-wheeled wagon pulled hard through the piling snow, but the horse had had an easy day, and George kept him going until, toward eight o’clock, he drew up behind a lofty pile of slabs and sawdust at the old mill.
A wilder storm never filled the resounding forests of the North. The old mill was far from being proof against the fine, icy snow; but when George rolled himself in his heavy blanket and lay down beside his dog, it was to go to sleep to the comfortable munching of the horse, and with the thought that Herbert and the turkeys were safe.
And they were safe. It was late in the afternoon the next day when George, having left the wagon at the mill, came floundering behind the horse through the unbroken road into the streets of the junction, to find Herbert anxiously waiting for him, and the turkeys, with full crops, trying hard to go to roost inside their double-decked car.
CHAPTER III
WHITE-FOOT
The December rain was falling down, down, down, as if the drops were lead instead of water. The December sky, if you could call it sky, had settled down, down, down, as if it too were of lead, and were being propped up only by the tops of the stiff bare trees.
A green stick in the fireplace behind me sizzled and sputtered and blew its small steam whistles to warn me away from the window, – from the sight of the naked trees, and the cold, thick fog upon the meadow, and the blur of the pine woods beyond, and the rain falling down, down, down.
A dreary world out of doors surely, with not a sign of life! The pine tree, rising up above the hillside in front of the window, was green, but only a few lifeless leaves rattled among the middle branches of the oaks, while up in the stark top of a hickory sapling was wedged a robin’s nest, deserted and wet and going to pieces.
I shivered, in spite of the hearth-fire behind me, for the face of the gray gloom pressed close up against the window outside. And the empty robin’s nest, already a ruin! its mud walls broken, its tiny timbers hanging loose in the rain!
But what a large nest for a robin, I thought; and how strangely peaked and pointed it is, like a little haycock! Then all at once, inside of me, and all over me, I felt a warm, delightful feeling.
“It isn’t possible,” said I aloud, but all to myself; “it isn’t possible that little White-Foot has moved into that old robin’s nest and fitted it up with a peaked roof for the winter?”
And the thought of it started the warm, delightful feeling again inside of me and all over me; and snatching up the tongs by the fireplace I ran out into the December rain and tapped a few times on the slender hickory sapling.
And what do you think happened?
It stopped raining?
No.
You broke your tongs?
No.
The nest fell out and hit you on the head?
No.
You ran back into the house again out of the rain?
Yes, I did, and I went straight to the window and looked out again at the robin’s nest, – my deserted, ruined robin’s nest, with its thick thatch of waterproof cedar bark, with its little round door-hole in the side, with its soft furry bed, all toasty warm, out of which with my tapping tongs I had just roused White-Foot and brought him sleepy-eyed to look down at me from his door.
The rain continued to fall down; but my spirits went up, and up, at the thought of that little mouse all safe and warm for the winter in Robin’s deserted nest.
And so, if “there are no birds in last year’s nest,” as mourns a doleful poem, you need not be sad on that account, for if you look closely, you may find, now and then, a mouse in last year’s nest – and who will say that finding a mouse in a bird’s nest is not almost as interesting as finding a bird there?
A robin’s nest in the winter-time would be the wettest, muddiest, coldest place in the world for a robin; but a mouse can take that old robin’s nest and turn it into a snuggery (if you know what a “snuggery” is) so cozy and warm that neither the tip of Mr. Mouse’s sharp nose, nor the tip of his thin ears, nor the tippy-tip of his long bare tail ever feels one sharp nip of the cold outside.
So, if there are no birds in last year’s nest (as surely there ought not to be), take your tongs and tap, or, better, climb up, and reach gently into the nest with your finger, for a mouse
