"It'll have to be my friend," thought Auna, "for there won't be no others up there but father."
An incident clouded the return journey, and though neither Jacob nor his daughter was sentimental, death confronted them and made them sorry. An old goat, one of the parents of the Red House flock, had disappeared during the previous winter, and they had fancied that he must have fallen into the stream and been swept away in a freshet that happened when he vanished. But now, in a little green hollow rimmed with heath and granite, they found all that was left of the creature—wisps of iron-grey hair, horns attached to his skull, a few scattered bones picked clean by the carrion crows and the hollow skeleton of his ribs with young grasses sprouting through it.
"Oh, father—it's 'Beardy,'" whispered Auna.
"So it is then. And I'm glad we found him. A very dignified thing, the way the creatures, when they know they're going to die, leave their friends and go away all alone. A fine thing in them; and there's many humans would do the same if they had the strength I dare say."
Auna descended among the bones and picked up "Beardy's" horns.
"Peter will like to have them for a decoration," she said. "I hope he didn't suffer much, poor old dear."
"Not much, I expect."
"And I hope the carrion crows didn't dare to touch him till he was gone, father."
"No, no. There's unwritten laws among the wild things. I expect they waited."
"Did his wives miss him, should you think?"