"Have you a pistol?"
The filly was not dead. Lying on her side, she was lifting her head and craning back to gaze at her dead dam.
Something clutched the Parson by the throat. A veil was rent. For a moment he seemed to see the tragedy as the man beneath him saw it—the passion, the pathos of that blind suffering in the cause of another.
"Here!" he said hoarsely, handing down a pistol.
The Gentleman took it, and seeing a pale face peering behind the other's shoulder,
"She's not suffering, I think. Don't look, Little Chap."
He walked back to the filly.
Lying still now, her head along the greensward, she watched him coming; snorting through full-blown nostrils.
He knelt at her head, pulling her ear, and caressing her.
"There, then, there!—It's all over now, little woman. I've come to comfort you."