“He is dead,” he answered in a low voice; “the lightning killed him just now.”
Ann-Katherin’s face was full of vivid sorrow and sympathy.
“Ah, the poor Hündchen! And he so beautiful and faithful. Ah, but Seppi has told me of him, and I love him. Oh, these cruel, cruel storms! They kill so many every year—men and beasts. But the good God took care of you and Seppi. You were not hurt?”
“No,” answered Squib a different look coming over his face, “we were not hurt. He took care of us.”
That thought hindered Squib from any outbreak of sorrow over his lost favourite. Deeply as he grieved for the poor dog killed in a moment, he could not but feel that a sense of awed gratitude and thankfulness for his own escape must keep back his sorrow for the poor dumb animal. He was quite old enough and quite imaginative enough to realize the intensity of his own peril. God had protected him in the time of his danger. It would be ungrateful, therefore, to make too great a lamentation for the death of poor Czar.
“We will bury him to-morrow,” said little Ann-Katherin. “Peter will dig him a grave. We will have a beautiful funeral. Seppi shall carve a headstone, and we will always remember him.”
This thought comforted Squib, and was afterwards carried out and from that day forward the little boy often found his way to the chalet on the other side of the valley.
The storm had done much mischief to the garden, and Squib was pleased and proud to help to make things neat and tidy again. Seppi had taken a bad cold from his wetting, and was not able to go out to the hillside with the goats. They fed nearer home with Moor and Ann-Katherin to tend them, and the others worked about the place, and Seppi did what he could, and carved a headstone (of wood) for Czar during his leisure moments. He was also engaged upon a portrait of the hound, enlarged from some of his many studies; and when Squib had this presented to him in a little frame, made by Seppi also, he almost cried with pleasure and gratitude.
“But I wish Seppi would get strong and well again,” he said to his mother when displaying his treasure; “I want us to go out together to feed the goats again.”