of the debauch to the horsepond, they found everything against them. Whether a high wind had got up, or what had happened, they could not tell, but it seemed to the geese as if there was an uncommonly high sea running, and the ground set in towards them with a strong steady swell that was most embarrassing to progress. To escape these difficulties some lashed their rudders and hove to, others tried to run before the wind, while the rest tacked for the pigsty. But there was no living in such weather, and one by one the craft lurched over and went down all standing.
Meanwhile the dame, the unconscious cause of this disaster, was attracted by the noise in the fowl-yard, and looking out saw all her ten geese behaving as if they were mad. The gander himself, usually so solemn and decorous, was balancing himself on his beak, and spinning round the while in a prodigious flurry of feathers and dust, while the old grey goose, remarkable even among her kind for the circumspection of her conduct, was lying stomach upwards in the gutter, feebly gesticulating with her legs. Others of the party were no less conspicuous for the extravagance of their attitudes and gestures, while the remainder were to be seen lying in a helpless confusion of feathers in the lee scuppers, that is to say, in the gutter by the pigsty.
Perplexed by the spectacle, the dame called in her neighbors, and after careful investigation it was decided in counsel that the birds had died of poison. Under these circumstances their carcasses were worth nothing for food, but, as the neighbors said, their feathers were not poisoned, and so, the next day being market day, they set to work, then and there, and plucked the ten geese bare. Not a feather did they
