You know that partridges go about in coveys, and lodge together in deep furrows, ready at the first alarm to rise in scattered flight, like a handful of grain thrown from the hand of the sower. Our own covey is large and happy; and our home is where a wide plain skirts a deep wood. There we find good food and safe shelter. So, ever since my feathers were grown, and I learned to run, I have had plenty to eat, and have found life very pleasant. I have had only one anxiety,-the opening of the hunting-season. Our mothers were always talking about it to each other in whispers. One day an old partridge, who saw that I looked uneasy about what I overheard, said: "Never mind, Ruddy" (they call me Ruddy, because my beak and legs are so red), "don't be afraid. When the huntingseason opens, you shall go with me, and I am sure that nothing will happen to you." This old partridge is very wise, and still spry, although the horseshoe mark is quite plain on his breast, and he has a few white feathers here and there. When he was young he was wounded in one wing, and, since this makes him rather clumsy, he always looks carefully before flying, takes his time, and gets along very well. He used sometimes to carry me

from the chimney, and the door and the windows opened, it will go hard with us." I believed what he said, knowing that he was a bird of great experience.

The other morning, at daybreak, I heard some one in the furrow calling softly: "Ruddy! Ruddy!" It was my old friend. His eyes were starting from his head. "Come quickly," he said, "and do as I do." I followed as well as I could, half asleep, not flying nor hopping, but running like a mouse between the great clods of earth. We went toward the wood, and as we passed the little white house, I saw that smoke was rising from the chimney, that the shutters were down, and before the wide-open door stood a group of hunters, all equipped, and surrounded by leaping dogs. As we passed, one of the hunters cried: "Let us take the plain, this morning, and leave the wood till after breakfast." Then I understood why we must go to the forest. My heart beat fast, and I grew very sad, thinking what might befall our poor friends whom we had left behind. Suddenly, just as we reached the edge of the wood, the dogs started and ran toward us. "Keep close to the ground,- close!" said the old partridge, crouch

had just risen. I was so terrified that I could not run. Fortunately, we were sheltered by the wood. My comrade hid behind a young oak; I crept up close to him, and we lurked there, looking out between the leaves. In the fields all around there was firing. At every report I shut my eyes; and whenever I dared to open them again I saw the wide plain, and the dogs searching in the high grass or ferreting among the sheaves, running round and round as if they were distracted. The hunters, their guns glittering in the sun, called after them and spoke angrily to them.

Once, out of a little cloud of mist, I thought I saw something falling that looked like scattered leaves, although there was no tree near. But my old partridge said these were feathers; and presently, sure enough, not far from us a superb gray partridge dropped in a furrow — and his wounded head fell back. When at last the sun rose high and it became very warm, the shooting abruptly ceased. The hunters returned to the little house, where we heard a great fire crackling. They marched along, their guns upon their shoulders, laughing, and talking about their shots; and the tired dogs came after, with tongues lolling out. "They are going to breakfast," said my companion; "let us also get something to eat." So we went into a buckwheat-field close at hand, -a great black-and-white field, all in bloom, smelling like almonds. Beautiful pheasants with russet plumage were already feeding there, stooping their red crests for fear of being seen. They were not so haughty as usual and asked us for news, inquiring whether we knew that one of their family had fallen.

est.

After a while the hunters became noisy over their breakfast, and we heard corks popping and glasses clinking. My old friend said that it was time to seek shelter, and we made our way to the forAt first you would have said that the wood was fast asleep; the little pool where the deer came to drink was stirred by no lapping tongues, and in the thyme about the warren, there was no trace of a rabbit; but, after a time, we could feel a mysterious shudder everywhere, as if each leaf, each blade of grass, was shielding a threatened life. The denizens of the woods have so many hiding-places, burrows, tangled thickets, bramble-heaps, piled faggots, and the little ditches where water remains so long after rain. I confess that I wished myself in one of these places, but my companion said it was better to stay where he could see what was coming and have the open air all about him.

It was well that we left the buckwheat-field when we did, for the hunters soon came to the forest. Oh! - I shall never forget that first firing through

the wood, those shots that made holes in the leaves, as hail does in April, and scarred the bark on the trees. I shall never forget how a rabbit leaped over the road, tearing up tufts of grass with his feet, and how a squirrel scampered down a tree close by us, knocking off the green chestnuts in showers. Large pheasants rose up with heavy flight; and the dry leaves, driven about by the gusts from the gun-shots, made a tumult among all the lower branches, arousing, putting to flight, and terrifying every living creature in the woods. An owl came out of a hollow in the tree near which we were hiding, and rolled his great, stupid eyes about, bewildered by fear. And then there were blue dragon-flies, and bees, and butterflies, — poor frightened things! - all fluttering about. A little cricket with scarlet wings alighted close to my beak, but I was too frightened, myself, to profit by his terror.

The old partridge kept perfectly calm. Listening attentively to the shots and the barking of the dogs, when they came near he would make a sign to me, and we would go a little faster, keeping well under cover. Once in crossing a path guarded at each end by a hunter, I thought we were lost. There was one great, tall fellow with black whiskers, who rattled his whole equipment, cartridge-box, hunting-knife, and powder-horn, whenever he moved, and his heavy, leather gaiters, buckled up to his knees, made him look still more formidable. At the farther end of the path, the other hunter, a little old man, was leaning against a tree, smoking a pipe and winking his eyes, as if he were very drowsy. I was not afraid of him ; but 'Oh, you think that a terrible fellow, yonder, with the gaiters! You are a simpleton, Ruddy," said my companion, laughing, and he flew up almost at the feet of the terrible sportsman. And, truly, the poor man was so intent upon his equipment, so busy admiring himself from top to toe, that we took him by surprise, and by the time he had brought his gun to his shoulder we were far away, out of his reach!

Oh, if hunters, when they think themselves all alone in the woods, only knew how many little staring eyes are watching them from behind bushes,- how many little pointed beaks are being held tight shut to prevent laughing aloud at the hunters' awkwardness!

On we went. Having nothing to do but to follow my old companion, my wings kept time with his, and I folded them whenever he rested. I can still see, as in a dream, all the places we passed — the warren, rosy with heather; the rabbit-holes at the foot of the yellow beeches; the great oak wood, where I knew that danger was stalking abroad; and the little green path, where my mother-partridge

had so often

taken her lit

tle brood to walk in the May sunshine; -where we hopped about, nibbling at the red ants that would crawl upon our legs, - and where we met haughty young pheasants, as big as chickens, who would not play with us. Across this path a deer standing high on his slender legs, with wide-open, startled eyes, seemed all ready to bound away. Then, the pool, where we used to come, fifteen or twenty together, all alighting at once

to drink at the

"WHEN THE DOGS CAME NEAR, THE OLD PARTRIDGE WOULD MAKE A SIGN TO ME AND WE WOULD GO A LITTLE FASTER, KEEPING WELL UNDER COVER."

spring and to

splash each other gayly with the bright water-drops that rolled

from our shining feathers. In the middle of this pool grew a clump of alders on a little island, and there we took refuge. Any dog must have had a keen scent to find us there. Soon after we arrived came a roebuck, dragging himself along on three legs, and leaving a bloody trail on the moss behind him. It was so sad a sight that I hid my head among the leaves; but I could not help hearing the wounded creature's panting, as, burning with fever, he lapped the clear water from the spring. At length the sun went down; the shots became scattering, then ceased altogether. It was over. We flew slowly back to the plain, to learn what had become of our friends. As we passed before the little white house, I saw a dreadful sight. the edge of a ditch, red hares and little gray rabbits lay side by side, their eyes dim as if from weeping, and their small paws joined as

On

if in death they were asking for mercy. Beside them were red and gray partridges; some with the horse-shoe mark, like my comrade, and others, with down under their feathers, like me. Is there any sadder sight than a dead bird? Wings are so full of life that it gives one a chill to see them stiff and cold, folded forever. There, too, lay a great, proud roebuck as if fast asleep, his rosy tongue protruding a little from his mouth. The hunters were smoking and stooping over all this slaughter; counting, and pulling the animals about before stowing them away in their gamebags. The dogs, in leash for the road, pricked up their ears and wrinkled their noses as if all ready to dash again into the cover.

As the red sun set and the hunters walked away, casting long shadows across the clods of earth and

along the paths glistening with evening dew, oh,how I hated them, men and dogs, the whole cruel, murderous band! Neither my companion nor I had the heart to say our usual good-night to the day that was ending. All along our way we saw wretched animals fatally hurt by chance shots and left to the tender mercies of the ants; field-mice biting the dust; swallows which had been arrested in their swift flight, and were now lying on their backs and holding up their stiff little legs to the night, which came down suddenly (as it does in autumn)- starry, but cold and damp.

Most heart-rending of all it was to hear, in the edges of the woods, over the meadows, and all along the sedgy river-bank, among the reeds, sad, far-away, anxious calls to which, though repeated again and again, no answer came.

SILAS MARNER was a queer-looking, shortsighted, silent man, who lived all alone "in a stone cottage that stood among the nutty hedgerows near the village of Raveloe, and not far from the edge of a deserted stone-pit." He was a weaver and worked hard at his loom, from morning till night, never going to any one's house and never asking any one to his. No one knew where he had come from or what his history had been before his coming to Raveloe, for he never said

an unnecessary word, but went about silent and gloomy, doing his work well, and being well paid for it. His looks were so strange and his ways so in keeping with them that the idle gossips of the neighborhood told all sorts of foolish stories about him, and believed there was something very dark and mysterious about his past history.

This, indeed, was true; but it was nothing of a startling or sensational nature-only that this man had suffered a terrible injustice from people he had