of his injury.  Instinctive knowledge told him he had “stumped” his toe.  This knowledge also brought the sense of certainty that his day’s pleasure was spoiled.  He knew that he would go hobbling along, the last brave in the Indian file.  The pain in his foot began to throb as he gathered up his weapons.  He walked for a few moments without looking at the wound.  He felt the oozing blood, and he bent his body and went along, grunting at every step.  Finally coming into a flood of sunlight on the path, he sat on a log and slowly lifted up his foot, twisting his face into an agonized knot.  He peeked at his toe at first stealthily; then little by little uncovering it with his nursing hand, he gazed fixedly at the wound.  The flesh on the end of the toe was hanging loosely by the skin.  It was a full minute before the boy could find courage to press the hanging flesh back to its place.  In the mean time the chicken, which lay behind him under the log, had regained its senses, squawked hoarsely twice, and walked into the bushes.  When Jimmy’s mind turned to his prize, the prize was gone.  He had been in the depths as he sat on the log.  But the loss of the pullet brought with it a still further depression, and Jimmy forgot all about his impersonation of the “Bald Eagle.”  He lost his conceit in the red ochre stripes on his face, and the iridescent feathers in his hat, and the blue-black mud on his nimble feet.  For a few moments he was just a sad-eyed boy who saw the hand of the whole world raised against him.  The cry of the new baby rang in his ears.  The thought of the other boys teasing him about the number of babies at his house frenzied him; and as his bills of wrongs grew longer and longer, Jimmy shook his head defiantly at all the world.  For a few hollow moments Jimmy tried to find the straying chicken.  He went through the empty form of spitting in his hand, saying, before he came down with his index finger,—­

[Illustration:  He jumped for the slanting boards with his bare feet, and his heart was glad.]

[Illustration:  He sat on a log and slowly lifted up his foot, twisting his face into an agonized knot.]

  “Spit, spit, spy,
   Tell me whur my chicken is, er I’ll hit ye in the eye.”

[Illustration:  “Spit, spit, spy, tell me whur my chicken is, er I’ll hit ye in the eye.”]

He threw a stick in the direction the chicken might have taken, but he knew that luck—­like all the world—­was against him, and he had no heart in the rites that on another day might have brought fortune to him.  His stubbed toe was hurting him, and the murmur of a ripple in the stream a few rods below the cattle guard called to him enticingly.  As soon as the boy deemed it safe to venture out of the thicket, he hobbled down to the water’s edge, and sat for a long time in the shade, with the cooling water laving his bruised feet.  He knew that the other boys would miss him, but he did not