An Old Log that Was Bewitched 81 



foul, had taken place. At first I thought nothing 

 was to be seen but tramped and bloody grass and 

 leaves, but a second examination revealed a bloody 

 trail leading into a nearby tangle of berry bushes, 

 which pursued, led to a dead bird and also to 

 the certainty that the gunners had left in a hurry, 

 for the Commander-in-Chief of the Covey had 

 been overlooked. He had been so full of life 

 and now how dead he was, how inert this week 

 a watchful father, next week a bit of carrion, 

 harmless and even beneficent in the scheme of 

 Nature, and killed, really not for food, but for 

 sport. Perhaps some old Brahmin rose up in 

 me and my very soul was filled with loathing at 

 the thought of taking life except as a stern neces- 

 sity. I remember thinking so long as he had 

 been killed for sport, no one should eat him, so 

 I carried him back and hid his body in the hollow 

 log where I had seen him first and rolled a heap 

 of stones to the door of his fitting sepulcher. 



I took my little grand-daughter last May to see 

 the place and found only the stones remaining, 

 more magic, the old log had turned into a bank 

 of violets. While the little child filled her chubby 

 hands with Nature's blue dearlings, I said aloud : 

 "Nothing walks with aimless feet, not one life 

 shall be destroyed or cast as rubbish on the void, 

 when God shall make the pile complete." She 



