ANIMAL RENEGADES. 



167 



possible to keep them near a farm. In winter-time 

 they appreciate the advantages of a warm stable ; but 

 the advent of spring makes them restless, till one fine 

 day they are off to the Sierra, sometimes in spite of 

 wooden collars and drag-ropes. The kid-season, too, is 

 apt to excite the migratory propensities of the dams ; 

 they do not like to bring forth in a land of bondage ; 

 some instinct seems to tell them that the Sierra is their 

 proper home. 



By a sort of spontaneous reversion, a similar instinct 

 sometimes awakens in domestic pets ; the mere neigh- 

 borhood of a great wilderness seems to tempt them to 

 desert. Among the wild cattle of the Brazos Valley 

 the prairie-squatters often see a cow with a bell and an 

 ornamental strap, perhaps the gift of a Missouri farmer's 

 wife who advertised her pet as " strayed or stolen." 



One of the most vivid recollections of my childhood 

 is an encounter with the bidet sauvage, the wild pony 

 that had roamed the Sambre highlands since the earliest 

 memory of such little men as my companions. We 

 were out after huckleberries, and had scattered among 

 the high broom-corn and hazelnut-thickets of the plateau 

 de Vence, when one of my comrades grabbed my arm 

 and pointed toward a little knoll where a solitary horse 

 was picking its way between the grass-fringed boulders. 

 We crept nearer and nearer till we reached a ledge of 

 cliffs on a level with the knoll, when my companion 

 clutched me once more. " Go slow !" he whispered ; 



