CHAPTER IX.
THE MIDNIGHT ATTACK.
WHISTLER’S wounded finger continued to heal rapidly, and it now occasioned him but little trouble. He did not use his left hand much, however; and one day he was a good deal surprised, and a trifle alarmed, on discovering that the arm itself had become much smaller than the other. He at once showed it to his aunt, who relieved his apprehensions by assuring him that its shrunken appearance was owing to its not being used. She also improved the opportunity to give him a few hints on the importance of exercise to bodily health.
“If you should keep your arm motionless for a long time,” she said, “it would finally wither and become useless. So it is with our whole bodies,—they suffer, and fall away, if they do not get exercised enough. The reason that Clinton is stronger and stouter than you is, that his body has been exercised more than yours. He was quite slender when he was a little child. And it is precisely the same with our minds. If we want to increase any of our faculties, we must make a good use of them, and they will be sure to grow. But, if we don’t exercise them, they will fall away, just as your arm has done.”
One morning, a few days after the picnic, there was a great commotion on the premises, occasioned by the discovery that some murderous marauder had visited the yard in the night, and taken the lives of a score of Clinton’s hens and chickens. A brood of young chickens, which slept in a barrel laid upon its side, apart from the other fowls, were all murdered, together with their mother; while in the hen-house the ground under the roosts was strewn with the bodies of the slaughtered. Clinton rushed into the house in a high state of excitement, on making the discovery, and the whole family hastened to see the bloody spectacle. Many were the exclamations of sorrow and pity, as they gazed upon the bodies of plump, matronly hens, and exemplary pullets, and feeble, infantile chickens, now stiffened in death, their plumage ruffled and stained with blood. Several of the fowls, however, were missing, having evidently been either devoured or carried off. Among these was one of the lords of the poultry-yard, who, perhaps, had attempted to defend his family from the midnight assassin, and had been carried off bodily, as a trophy of victory. The survivors were silent and melancholy, and the shadow of a great calamity seemed to have settled upon them. The remaining rooster, to be sure, was so ungracious as to crow lustily over the bodies of his murdered household, in the presence of all the family. Whistler charitably suggested that this was a song of triumph for his own escape; but Clinton, who knew the jealous rogue better than his cousin did, thought it was quite as likely that he was exulting over the tragic downfall of his rival. Perhaps, however, with the bravado natural to his race, he affected an indifference and stoicism which he did not feel, and crowed, as boys sometimes whistle in a grave-yard, merely to “keep his courage up.”
After the first outburst of regret and pity which the spectacle called forth from all present, their curiosity was thoroughly awakened to ascertain what animal had committed this cruel outrage upon a happy and peaceful family. After a careful examination of the premises, no track or trace of the creature could be found. All was mystery. There was nothing but the slaughtered victims upon which to found a speculation, and these told no tales against their murderer. Clinton was the first to hazard a guess in regard to the assassin.
“It must have been either a fox or a wild-cat,” he said; “don’t you think so, father?”
“If I were going to guess, I should say it was a skunk,” replied his father.
“O, no, father,—a skunk wouldn’t have killed so many of the fowls, would it?” said Clinton, who was unwilling to admit that so common and despised an animal had done the mischief. “Besides,” he added, “we have skunks around here all the time, and why didn’t they ever do such a thing before?”
“If I remember right, they have done just such things before,” replied his father.