If old Squire Price had any one bump of phrenology developed more than another, it was corvicide, or, kill-crowativeness. From corn-planting to husking-time, from dewy morn until evening more than due, he might be seen dodging behind fences, crawling around barns, stalking along in the high grass, with a long single-barreled old gun, trying to get a shot at the black thieves of crows that were forever at work on his old, sandy farm.

'What cause have you, my aged friend,' Brother Hornblower once said to him, 'What cause have you to molest these birds, as 'toil not, neither do they spin'?'

'I tell yer what,' answered the Squire, shaking his head with savage jerks, 'come down to my house ary moruin' airly, you'll hear caws!'

Brother Hornblower smiled grimly and walked gently away, after that, to get the evening paper at the grocery-post-office. He set his face against jokes—unless they were serious ones.

Whether it was Brother Hornblower's words, or more crows than usual, the neighbors around Squire Price's farm were regaled for two days after the above talk, with such constant explosions of gunpowder that it was surmised the Squire must have bought 'a hull kag o' powder, and got some feller to help him shoot.' The consequence of this energy was, that the persecuted devil's-canaries flew away to other farms where powder was scarce-first and foremost descending in flocks on Brother Hornblower's lands, and digging up his young corn—it was in the month of May—until even he found cause to go at these birds as don't spin; for he found out that they toiled most laboriously. Being a man of peaceful disposition, and opposed to the use of fire-arms, he thought over a plan by which fire-logs might be used with great advantage to his own benefit, by destroying a large number of crows at one fell blow. How he succeeded in this fell-blow, was told a few evenings afterward in the grocery-post-office, by young Tyler, a promising youth who had not, as they say of other sad dogs, 'quite got his set yet,' that is, attained completion in figure and carriage. Seated on the edge of a barrel half-filled with corn, and cutting a piece of pine-wood to one sharp point only to be followed by another sharp point, he was talking to another youth in a desultory manner, about his intentions 'to go by water,' in old Bizzle's schooner, next trip she took, when Squire Price came in to get his daily newspaper, The Beantown Democrat.

'You bin givin' them crows partikler hail, hain't you, Squire?' asked Tyler the youthful.

'Wal, about as much as they kin kerry,' answered the Squire. 'They hain't bin squawkin' round my prem'ses none to speak of lately.'

'They bin roond Brother Horublower's, thick as pison, though,' said Tyler. 'He counted on killin' 'bout a milyon on 'em yesserday—on-ly he didn't quite come it.'

'Thought he wouldn't never fire no guns at 'em!'

'Put a couple o' barrils into 'em yesserday.'