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They had been warned earlier that this sacrifice might be necessary, but had not believed that it would really happen.

They were just getting their clutches ready for the spring sitting, and they protested that to take the eggs away now was murder.

For the first time since the expulsion of Jones, there was something resembling a rebellion.

Led by three young Black Minorca pullets, the hens made a determined effort to thwart Napoleon's wishes.

Their method was to fly up to the rafters and there lay their eggs, which smashed to pieces on the floor.

Napoleon acted swiftly and ruthlessly.

He ordered the hens' rations to be stopped, and decreed that any animal giving so much as a grain of corn to a hen should be punished by death.

The dogs saw to it that these orders were carried out.

For five days the hens held out, then they capitulated and went back to their nesting boxes.

Nine hens had died in the meantime.

Their bodies were buried in the orchard, and it was given out that they had died of coccidiosis.

Whymper heard nothing of this affair, and the eggs were duly delivered, a grocer's van driving up to the farm once a week to take them away.

All this while no more had been seen of Snowball.

He was rumoured to be hiding on one of the neighbouring farms, either Foxwood or Pinchfield.

Napoleon was by this time on slightly better terms with the other farmers than before.

It happened that there was in the yard a pile of timber which had been stacked there ten years earlier when a beech spinney was cleared.

It was well seasoned, and Whymper had advised Napoleon to sell it; both Mr. Pilkington and Mr. Frederick were anxious to buy it.

Napoleon was hesitating between the two, unable to make up his mind.

It was noticed that whenever he seemed on the point of coming to an agreement with Frederick, Snowball was declared to be in hiding at Foxwood, while, when he inclined toward Pilkington, Snowball was said to be at Pinchfield.

Suddenly, early in the spring, an alarming thing was discovered.

Snowball was secretly frequenting the farm by night! The animals were so disturbed that they could hardly sleep in their stalls.

Every night, it was said, he came creeping in under cover of darkness and performed all kinds of mischief.

He stole the corn, he upset the milk-pails, he broke the eggs, he trampled the seedbeds, he gnawed the bark off the fruit trees.

Whenever anything went wrong it became usual to attribute it to Snowball.

If a window was broken or a drain was blocked up, someone was certain to say that Snowball had come in the night and done it, and when the key of the store-shed was lost, the whole farm was convinced that Snowball had thrown it down the well.

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