Osra felt very proud of them, for they were fine, healthy young birds, and although they had rather a quaint air—­being covered with a curious, bristly-looking growth, which made them look like young hedgehogs—­from the very day they kicked off the thick, glossy, yellowish-white shell which had covered them, they could run about and even pick up their food from the ground.

They soon ate up the odd eggs that were lying about, cracked them easily with their strong little beaks, and scraped out the inside as though they had been practicing it for years.  By the end of a fortnight they were about the size of barn-door fowls, and quite independent.

Neither Osra nor his wives had taken much notice of them during this eventful fortnight, except to glance at them occasionally and acknowledge to themselves that they were exceedingly fine young birds; but, when they were able to trot about in this manner, and were no longer troublesome, the parents occasionally took them for walks, and a very fine family they were, too.

They had many adventures during these walks, some of them very exciting ones.

Once, as they were striding across the plain, they saw a stranger approaching, and although Osra was somewhat suspicious, he yet had sufficient curiosity to let him come quite close, and even among them.

The stranger was a somewhat curious ostrich, and did not walk in quite so dignified or stately a manner as an ostrich usually does.  His head and neck moved somewhat stiffly, in curious little jerks, and his legs, although they were very white, were rather a curious shape.

Still there could be no doubt that he was an ostrich, because his back was covered with ostrich feathers, and no one can imitate an ostrich’s head and neck.

And so the stranger was allowed to come into their very midst, and just as Osra was thinking of inspecting him more minutely, for he did not approve of strangers, there was a fearful noise, a blaze of fire and smoke, and one of his wives and two or three of his children fell dead.

Osra waited no longer; with a peculiar sort of guttural chuckle he stretched out his long legs, and with tremendous strides—­which covered from twenty to twenty-two feet at a time—­flew like the wind, followed by his remaining wives and little ones.

Away they went, taking no thought or heed of the young ones so that they got away, and when they had been racing for some time at the rate of twenty miles an hour, Osra was surprised to find himself and his wives back at the very same spot!

There were the bodies of his wife and children, and there also was the stranger ostrich.

Osra was taken by surprise, for although he was not particularly good at hearing, he prided himself on his sight, and he was a little puzzled to know how he could have got to the very same spot again without seeing where he was going.

But, startled as he was, and puzzled as he had felt at this stranger ostrich, he suddenly did what, had he only done before, might have saved the lives of his wife and children.