constructed both belt and shoes himself, and he hadn't any hat at all upon
his crimson-gold thatch of hair. I looked at him so long that I had to look
away, and then when I did I looked right back at him because I couldn't
believe that he was true.

"Now I'm going to pick them up gently, two at a time, tie their feet
together with a piece of this string, and hand them to you to put inside
the carriage. I'll catch the cock first, the handsome old sport," and as
Pan spoke, he began to suit his actions to his words with amazing tact and
skill. I shall always be glad that the first chicken I ever held in my arms
was put into them gently by that woods man, and that it was the Golden Bird
himself. "Put him in and shut the door, and he'll calm the ladies as you
bring them to him," he commanded as he bent down and lifted two of the Bird
brides and began to tie their feet together with a piece of cord he had
taken from a deep pocket in the gray trousers.

"Oh, thank you," I said with a depth of gratitude in my voice that I did
not know I possessed. "You are the most wonderful man I ever saw--I mean
that I ever saw with chickens," I said, ending the remark in an agony of
embarrassment. "I don't know much about them. I mean chickens," I hastened
to add, and made matters worse.

"Oh, they are easy, when you get to know 'em, chickens--or men," he said
kindly, without a spark in his eyes back of their black bushes. "Are they
yours?"

"They are all the property I have got in the world," I answered as I
clasped the last pair of biddies to my breast, for while we had been
holding our primitive conversation, I had been obeying his directions and
loading the Birds into Grandmother Craddock's stately equipage. Anxiety