With a groan he obeyed, and, making him sit down on the edge of the bed, she combed out his cue, and tied it up with a black ribbon, instead of the eel-skin.
Mr. Goodhue, who had a large family of his own, was very fond of children, and it was a curious sight to see Winthrop Griffin tugging the stately old minister by the hand, to see his fowl and playthings, his tame crow, and the woodchuck he had caught. The good man also sincerely sympathized with him respecting the loss of his hen and expected brood of chickens.
Mrs. Griffin would have persuaded the minister to lie down after dinner; but as the boys were going to work in the field, he wished to read the Scriptures and have prayers before they went away, it being his constant custom. The parents and children all listened with the greatest respect and attention, but all attempts to engage the seniors in conversation of a religious nature were useless.
After the evening meal, when Parson Goodhue prepared to depart, Dapple, true to her instincts, was found in a chamber over the stable where Griffin kept grain. She had gone up a flight of stairs, but all attempts to induce her to go down by the same were unavailing.
“Look here, parson,” said Edmund; “let me knock her on the head, and take her for wolf bait—there’s a bounty on wolves,—and I’ll give you my roan colt, that’s worth a dozen of her.”
But Mr. Goodhue entreated for the life of his beast. Griffin, then putting a great pile of hay on the stable floor beneath, took up the boards of the floor above, and forced her to jump down.
“What a strange family,” said the good man to himself as he returned, his saddle-bags stuffed to their utmost extent. “I would be content with less respect and kindness shown to myself if they would only manifest some respect for my Master. How sad to see that old man so thoughtless! Well, the children are different. Joe is a good man,—there is certainly encouragement there,—and Walter takes after his mother; if she was anywhere else, she would be different.”
In the course of the autumn, Dapple ended her eventful life; in trying to get over a fence with the fetters on, she got cast, and beat herself to death, thus dying as she had lived. Two days after, the parson, on going to his barn to feed his cattle, found a noble-looking roan horse in Dapple’s stall, a present from Edmund Griffin.