HOLIDAY SUPPLEMENT.

Our Book Section is devoted this week to a choice of books for Holiday Reading, that is, of the kind read for pleasure and not for information.

TWO SHORT STORIES.

BY FRANK'. PENN SMITH.

I.—THE CONSCIENCE OF A HEN.

THE pig found the hen hatching her eggs.

" Pouf ! " cried the pig, " why sit there ? "

" Crr !" replied the fowl. A reply but no answer.

" Ough 1 Fuff ! " said the pig. " How foolish!"

"Crr 1" came again. An obstinate, silly sound.

" Get up ! Get up ! " said the pig. " Come and look for food."

She looked this way and that, the hen. Food ?

Yes, she remembered now. That was it. She knew she wanted something in a dull, dazed way.

" Come ; " snuffled the pig. " Come ! "

The hen rose, all puffy and funny. She staggered stiffly about.

" Come ! " grunted the pig—and they went.

They were a long time looking for that food. When the pig rooted, the hen goggled, forgetting what she came about.

When the hen scratched, the pig peered, wondering why she kicked so much.

Sometimes the pig ran.

That was when he had a bright idea.

But the fowl's ideas never got bright. They seemed to addle slowly as she ran.

They were a long time away.

Now the village idiot found the nest deserted, the eggs cold.

He knew the hen's business better than his own, for he had none. He was hen-minded, and could crow better than a cock. He understood bad eggs.

So he went in search of the hen, and found her following the pig.

" Now you've done it ! " he cried. " Now you've done it Why didn't you leave her alone ? " he said to the pig, " making her go pig's ways ! She'll sit till Doomsday. Till she is as dead as the eggs ! "

" Pouf ! " snorted the pig.

" No more chickens for pies ! " cried the idiot. " No more chickens for pies ! "

The crazed hen staggered back to the nest and sank on to

the eggs. They were cold.

She was horrified, confused. She knew that all was wrong with the world, and that she was in the midst of it. She tried to think, but could only sit with her beak open.

" Now you've done it Now you've done it ! " cried the idiot.

She began to feel -properly terrified, right into her broody conscience, her conscience which brooded without thinking.

Or perhaps it was addled, like the eggs. She felt it going bad. She nestled down deeper into the nest, throwing her head backward and turning up her eyes, in an effort to get life back into the eggs.

" Now you've done it-! " the idiot kept crying. " Now you've done it ! '!

Ali, poor -fowl I She was never well balanced. You cannot balance nothing.

And her mind was—nothing.

She became absolutely terrified.

, Her conscience was really not as big as a thimble, but it burnt- like- a house on fire !

She felt herself doomed, damned, destroyed.

She could endure it- no longer. . . .

. Shrieking, she fled. . . .

In an hour she was. nothing again.

. She had tscratched away her sorrows. Something dreadful, had happened—she hardly knew what, as She sobbed down a few worms.

Just then a hen, haggard and hysterical, steering rather wildly, came high-stepping about, followed by a lot of little fluffy yellow chicks, like bits of muff, running on yellow hair- pins (why shouldn't there be yellow hairpins ?). In her furious, reckless scratchings she sometimes kicked them away for yards (chickens' yards), but they jumped up, regardless, and rushed to the scratch again, as she called to them in a yolky tone, suited to their understandings.

The broody hen forgot her worms and regarded them vertically, horizontally and at various angles.

Chicks ! Whichever way she looked at them they were the same I Real chicks !

She staggered up and began to superintend.

She followed them, behaving as the mother hen behaved. When the mother hen pranced forward, she did the same. When she sat down, she also sat down, and cooed to herself as there was nothing else to coo to.

But the chickens ran to the nearest hen.

It was feathers and shelter they wanted. They had not too much sense. After all, they, too, had come out of eggs. It's bad for the head to come out of an egg.

(One thing is as good as another to an egg.) So, before they had done, the broody hen walked off with six chicks, while the mother hen was left with one.

Yet, as hens can't count, she thought. it quite a crowd, and rushed about behaving accordingly.

The village idiot found the broody hen covering six chickens. " Lor " he cried. " However did you do that ? "

But the hen was silent. She pushed up her lower eyelids and closed her eyes.

And when the chicks beneath her stirred, she purred. For- now her conscience felt like a tea-cosy.

IL—THE SHEEP. A PASTORAL.

THE ewe was bloken-mouthed and unspeakably obstinate the lamb was all legs, with no ideas of anything (not even itself). It was never even counted, except by the ewe, for it had no earmark.

The callous eyes of the sheep saw nought but the sweet grass and the sour, while the lamb straddled about in a silly existence of its own.

It was for the sweet herb that the ewe ambled away on her bandy legs, and it was from folly that the lamb remained butting the briar-bush for its mother.

Now the ewe fed endlessly in one direction. But at intervals she thought of the lamb and mumbled a babbling baa with her mouth full. But the lamb heeded not, rioting in circles, jumping and wagging its loose head.

And presently the width of the paddock was between them, and the ewe passed through the slip-panel.

A weatherbeaten ram was the last to leave. It stared at the lamb with its bulgy eyes which said squarely, " This is not my business," "and fed away after the others.

So the ram rambled, and the lamb gambolled, till it was left alone. 'Lost.

But not lost to the crow, wheeling slowly in the air, observing everything-

Suddenly he lit upon the fence, a wedge of darkness. Thence he gazed upon the lamb, first with one yellow eye, then the other, thinking out its destruction.

Yes I He would pounce down upon the woolly thing. He would- baffle and worry it i

He would pick its eyes out 1 And he cawed to himself in a strangled, hollow tone that meant murder.

Slowly he unclosed his gloomy wings and floated across the paddock.

But not unobserved. He was seen from the dead tree, where the magpies were enjoying their grubs. " The crow !. " they; shrieked in chorus.: r` He is looking_ for our chicks Let us be after fain " Andlin an instant, as he poised aboVe the devoted lardb, he was . surrounded by a flight of wild, fearless_ things, who struck at him with their pinions, winging Ultra as they flew past.

He laughed spitefully.

Presently be gasped, breathless with repeated bloViS, breaking through them. But they were too quick for him —he could not strike them inreturn. .

He tried to escape but in vain ; they got above him and battered him downward--for he was getting old and thin.

Blinded and baffled by their furious attack he became ;twined and fell. They bruised and pecked him to the quick, and, broken with this unexpected torment, he fell With his beak open, sank on one side, and died.

But the magpies fluttered back to the dead tree, and chanted triumphantly a melodious and sad song.

Then the ewe, attracted by the commotion, came running back through the slip-panel, chewing and bleating, with all the flock after her, and, identifying the lamb, congratulated it in a broken voice, full of pulped grass. It was a solemn moment.

But next day it was shearing, and she forgot everything else with her wool, and went to a new pasture.

But in course of time the lamb was promoted properly to be a sheep.