orchid; and everywhere there was a great noise of birds--thrushes,

blackbirds, robins, finches, and many more--and in one warm corner of

the park some bracken was unrolling, and there was a leaping and rushing

of fallow deer.

These things brought back to Mr. Bensington his early and forgotten

delight in life; before him the promise of his discovery grew bright and

joyful, and it seemed to him that indeed he must have come upon the

happiest day in his life. And when in the sunlit run by the sandy bank

under the shadow of the pine trees he saw the chicks that had eaten the

food he had mixed for them, gigantic and gawky, bigger already than many

a hen that is married and settled and still growing, still in their

first soft yellow plumage (just faintly marked with brown along the

back), he knew indeed that his happiest day had come.

At Mr. Skinner's urgency he went into the runs but after he had been

pecked through the cracks in his shoes once or twice he got out again,

and watched these monsters through the wire netting. He peered close to

the netting, and followed their movements as though he had never seen a

chick before in his life.

Whath they'll be when they're grown up ith impothible to think," said

Mr. Skinner.

"Big as a horse," said Mr. Bensington.

The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth