pecting the reason why this time the boy carried his gun.
On the fifth night after the killing of the fawn Byng did something that he had never done before. Always up to that time a wholesome respect for Sandy Jim's dogs had caused him to avoid the vicinity of the woodsman's house; but on this night he happened to take a short cut which led him within a hundred feet of Mayfield's fence and, perhaps because the night was an especially black one and no dogs seemed to be about, he was encouraged to explore the premises.
The blackness meant nothing to Byng. His luminous eyes were made for such nights, and when a slight noise caused him to glance upward he recognized instantly the five big bulky objects fifteen feet or so above him on a limb of a large leaning mulberry tree. He passed like a ghost up the slanting trunk of the tree, fastened himself upon the nearest turkey hen, and leaped with it to the ground. The turkey was too heavy to be carried far. Within a half mile he stopped, feasted to his heart's content, then buried the rest of the carcass and scratched dead leaves over the spot.
The boy was writing a letter in the plantation-house library when he saw Sandy Jim Mayfield
