FARMER'S SCARECROW PROTECTS A CORN-FIELD

"It's a man."

"To-night," said daddy, "we are going to have the story of the meeting of the brownies, crows, and old Mr. Scarecrow. The crows had been giving feasts in a corn-field almost every morning bright and early before any of the big people who lived in the nearby farm-house were up. Such feasts as they did have! And one day they asked the brownies if they wouldn't come to their next one.

"'Caw-caw,' said the crows together.

"'Where are we going?' asked one of the brownies teasingly, for they had been going around and around in circles and hadn't reached any place.

"'I don't quite know,' said Black Crown Crow, 'it's a question which is very hard to decide.'

"'But we thought you had chosen a special spot,' said one of the brownies.

"Black Crown Crow looked very sad, and his black wings seemed to droop. 'It's that guest I never asked. He's causing all the trouble. How very rude it is of folks to come to a feast who aren't invited, and to arrive before us, too. It's very e-x-a-s-p-e-r-a-t-i-n-g!'

"'Who is he?' shouted the brownies, for every little while Black Crown Crow had gone ahead and then had come back. In these little trips he had seen right in the center of the corn-field a man—a real man, he thought, with a hat and a coat and trousers and boots—and carrying something which he couldn't quite make out. It was either a great huge stick—or worse still—it was a gun. He shivered whenever he thought of that awful word gun.

"'Caw-caw,' again shrieked Black Crown Crow, 'it's a man and he has a gun—I'm sure it's a gun. Now the rudeness of him! As if we wanted a man and a gun at our corn feast!'

"'Oh, it was to have been a corn feast, and now the man has stopped it,' laughed one of the brownies. 'Well, such a joke! But to show you how nice we'll be when we're here ready for a party which can't take place, we'll give a nice party ourselves.'

"And the brownies scampered about a little grove near the corn-field, and there they made a bonfire over which they cooked some corn-meal which they had carried with them in their bags. They knew all along, ever since they'd started, where the crows wanted them to go for the feast, and they also knew that the farmer had made that scarecrow in his corn-field to frighten off Black Crown Crow and his followers.

"The brownies made a fine feast, but how they did chuckle among themselves that the pole dressed up as a man had succeeded in saving the corn for the people of the farm-house."