THE CHICKEN. 
297 
reading-lamp, and emptied its contents into the 
cooking-stove. I had one little companion, a 
chicken which I had bought from a passing 
mountain-lad. It did not grow, and would not 
mingle with the other fowls : accustomed to 
sleep in the armpit of its former owner, it felt 
the cold of its unsheltered roost in the verandah, 
and with a fretful crooning it would come flut- 
tering to perch on my bed. How it escaped the 
rats so long I cannot tell ; they caught birds as 
large on the trees, and raced with them over the 
Hoor in broad daylight, dragging them hither 
and thither as they tore them in pieces. Any 
one who has never before killed a fowl must find 
the act very repulsive : in the state of my nerves 
it seemed little short of murder to slay the trust- 
ing little thing, whose nearness to me I had 
found companionable. I somehow twisted its 
neck, when I threw it from me as far as I was 
able ; then I lay down for some hours in utter 
misery. At last I got up to seek for it, and 
made from it the soup which I believe saved me 
till aid came. 
The third week the fever abated somewhat ; 
I was more weak and helpless than feverish, 
although there was a recurrence every morning. 
I wrote a note for my friends, telling liow it was 
