that saves trouble. I expect the boys are careless, too. for I've seen
the fowls eating snow and ice."

"That accounts for your poultry being like crows, for, whatever the
reason may be, snow-water will soon reduce chickens to mere feathers and
bones."

"You don't say so!" cried the squire. "Well, I never heard that before."

"I don't think your system of feeding is the correct one, either,"
pursued Leonard. "You give your hens the warm meal to-morrow evening, as
usual, and then about midnight go to the roosts and feel of their crops.
I'll warrant you'll find them empty. The meal, you see, digests speedily,
and is soon all gone. Then come the long cold hours before morning, and
the poor creatures have nothing to sustain them, and they become chilled
and enfeebled. It takes some time for the grain you give them in the
morning to digest, and so they are left too long a time without support.
Give them the grain in the evening--corn and buckwheat and barley
mixed--and there is something for their gizzards to act on all night
long. The birds are thus sustained and kept warm by their food. Then in
the morning, when they naturally feel the cold the most, give them the
warm food, mixing a little pepper with it during such weather as this."

"Well," remarked the squire, "I guess you're right. Anyway, I'll try your
plan. One is apt to do things the same way year after year without much
thought about it."

"Then, again," resumed Leonard, "I find it pays to keep poultry warm,
clean, and well sheltered. In very cold weather I let them out only for an
hour or two. The rest of the time they are shut up in the chicken-house,