But it was not the external appearance of Umslumpogaas, regal though it was, that endeared him to me so much as his great intellectual potentialities.  That bird had a mind, and I was determined to develop it to the uttermost.  Under my assiduous tuition he progressed in a manner that can only be described as astonishing.  He quickly learned to take a letter from the post-girl in his beak and deliver it without error to that member of the family to whom it was addressed.  I was in the habit of reading to him extracts from the daily papers, and the interest he took in the course of the recent war and his intelligent appreciation of the finer points of Marshal FOCH’S strategy were most pleasing to observe.  He would greet the news of our victorious onsweep with exultant crows, while at the announcement of any temporary set-back he would mutter gloomily and go and scratch under the shrubbery.  On Armistice day he quite let himself go, cackling and mafficking round the yard in a manner almost absurd.  But who did not unbend a little on that historic day?

Perhaps his greatest achievement, however, was the mastering of a system of signals, a sort of simplified Morse code, which we established through the medium of an old motor-horn.  One blast meant breakfast-time; two intimated that I was about to dig in the waste patch under the walnut trees and he was to assemble his wives for a diet of worms; three loud toots were the summons for the mid-day meal; four were the curfew call signifying that it was time for him to conduct his consorts to their coop for the night; and so on, with special arrangements in case of air-raids.  Not once was Umslumpogaas at fault; no matter in what remote corner of the yard he and his hens might be, at the sound of the three blasts he would come hastening up with his hens for dinner.  I was most gratified.

And then came the disaster.  I was sawing wood one morning in the saddle house, and Umslumpogaas and his wives were sitting round about the door, dusting themselves.  All was peaceful.  Suddenly down the lane which passes the gate of my yard appeared a large grey-bodied car.  Some school-children being in the road the driver emitted three loud warning hoots of his horn.  In an instant Umslumpogaas was on his feet and, his wives at his heels, making a bee line for the gate.  By the time he reached it the car had passed and was turning the corner that leads to the village, when the driver again sounded his horn thrice.  With an imperious call to his wives to follow, Umslumpogaas set off at full speed in pursuit, and before I had fully grasped the situation my entire poultry-yard had vanished from sight in the wake of that confounded motor-car.  And it is the unfortunate truth that neither Umslumpogaas nor a single member of his harem has been seen or heard of since.  It is as bad as the affair of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

I said at the beginning that this was rather a sad little story.  Taking into consideration the present price of new-laid eggs it amounts more or less to a tragedy, and I put it down to nothing but the baleful effects of over-education.