350 AROUND AN OLD HOMESTEAD. 



thought he h?.d been poisoned or was hurt, and went 

 to help him. I followed his pitiful sounds, and found 

 him alone in the most desolate part of the woods. He 

 had evidently been left there by some man to die, and 

 had been there now alone for some days. The starv- 

 ation and thirst had caused him apparently to become 

 insane, so that he seemed not even to be conscious of 

 my presence. I brought him home, and on the way he 

 was taken with a kind of fit, and cast up green pieces 

 of weeds and grass, which he had eaten out there in 

 his fever. We fed him on milk and bread, and he ate 

 it so eagerly. But the next day he was taken again, 

 and immediately the old wild look came into his eyes, 

 and he made his way back to the woods, and we heard 

 his strange cries once more. I took the rifle, and found 

 him again wandering and moaning in his insanity. He 

 did not notice my presence any more than that of a 

 stump, but finally, when I poked at him with my gun 

 barrel, a gleam of remembrance seemed to come into 

 his eyes for an instant, and he came up to me and 

 wagged his tail — only to relapse again into his insane 

 life. And then I killed him. And as I watched him — 

 his life-blood trickling, the great ragged wound, the 

 convulsive gaspings, and final stiffening — out there 

 alone in the woods bending over his frail little body, 

 1 felt that I was being taught anew of the terrible but 

 sublime mystery of death. His was the same death 

 that you and I are to know, and his red blood had 

 meant as much to his brief life as yours and mine does 

 to ours. He had done me no harm, but I felt that in 

 his case to shoot him was one of those things that we 

 might call a mercy. Poor little fellow ! He had very 

 beautiful eyes. 



