“There, sweeties, is a nice smooth bin for you to go to bed on,” said Adam as he set the Ladies Leghorn one by one from his arms on the edge of a long narrow box that was piled high with corn.  “Now you stay here with them until I bring the rest.  Put your Golden Bird down beside the biddies, and I’ll bring the others to put on the other side of him to roost, and in the morning he can begin scratching for a happy and united family.”  With which command Pan disappeared into the purple darkness and left me alone in the snapping monster shadows with only the sleepy Golden Bird for company.  The Bird shook himself after being deposited beside the half-portion of his family, puffed himself up, sank his long neck into his shoulders, and evidently went to sleep.  I shivered up close to him and looked over my shoulder into the blackness behind the teeth and then didn’t look again until I heard the soft pad of the weird leather shoes behind me.

“Now all’s shipshape for the night,” said Pan as he spread out his armful of feathers into a bunchy line on the edge of the bin.  “Just throw them about two double handfulls of mixed corn and wheat down in the hay litter on the floor at daybreak and keep them shut up and scratching until you are sure none of them are going to lay.  From the red of their combs I judge they will all be laying in a few days.”

“At daybreak?” I faltered.

“Yes; they ought to be got to work as soon as they hop off the roost,” answered Pan, as he spread a little more of the hay on the floor in front of the perch of the Bird family.

“How do I know it—­I mean daybreak?” I asked, with eagerness and hesitation both in my voice, as Pan started padding out through the monster-haunted darkness towards the square of silver light beyond the huge door.  As I asked my question I followed close at his heels.

“I’ll be going through to Plunketts and I’ll call you, like this.”  As we came from the shadows into the moonlight beside the coach, Adam paused and gave three low weird notes, which were so lovely that they seemed the sounds from which the melody of all the world was sprung.  “I’ll call twice, and then you answer if you are awake.  If not, I’ll call again.”

“I’ll be awake,” I asserted positively.  “Won’t you—­that is, must I fix—­”

“That’s all for to-night, and good night,” he answered me with a laugh that was as reedy as the brisk wind in the trees.  In a second he was padding away from me into the trees beyond the garden as swiftly as I suppose jaguars and lithe lions travel.

“Oh, don’t you want some supper?” I called into the moonlight, even running a few steps after him.

“Parched corn in my pocket—­lambs,” came fluting back to me from the shadows.

“Supper am sarved, little Mis’,” Rufus announced from the hack door, as I stood still looking and listening into the night.

“Uncle Cradd,” I asked eagerly at the end of the food prayer that the old gentleman had offered after seating me with ceremony behind a steaming silver coffee urn of colonial pattern, of which I had heard all my life, “who is that remarkable man?”