OTJE EUEAL DIVINITY 137 



about a mile out on the commons. My conscience 

 instantly told me that one of them was mine. It 

 would be a fit closing of the third act of this pas- 

 toral drama. Thitherward I bent my steps, and 

 there upon the smooth plain I beheld the scorched 

 and swollen forms of two cows slain by thunderbolts, 

 but neither of them had ever been mine. 



The next day I continued the search, and the 

 next, and the next. Finally I hoisted an umbrella 

 over my head, for the weather had become hot, and 

 set out deliberately and systematically to explore 

 every foot of open common on Capitol Hill. I 

 tramped many miles, and found every man's cow 

 but my own, — some twelve or fifteen hundred, I 

 should think. I saw many vagrant boys and Irish 

 and colored women, nearly all of whom had seen a 

 buffalo cow that very day that answered exactly to 

 my description, but in such diverse and widely sepa- 

 rate places that I knew it was no cow of mine. And 

 it was astonishing how many times I was myself 

 deceived; how many rumps or heads, or line backs 

 or white flanks, I saw peeping over knolls, or from 

 behind fences or other objects that could belong to 

 no cow but mine ! 



Finally I gave up the search, concluded the 

 cow had been stolen, and advertised her, offering a 

 reward. But days passed, and no tidings were 

 obtained. Hope began to burn pretty low, — was 

 indeed on the point of going out altogether, — when 

 one afternoon, as I was strolling over the commons 

 (for in my walks I still hovered about the scenes of 



