For several days they were occupied with the labour of transporting their baggage, and fitting up their present abode with comforts and conveniences. The tent was not established at the landing where it was pitched the first night, but on the edge of the prairie, a furlong distant, and within a stone's throw of the spring.
On the third night after their removal, they experienced a loss which caused them to feel both sad and anxious. Nanny and her kids, having no place provided for them, had selected a nice retreat under the shelter of a mossy oak, and made that their lounging place by day, and their sleeping place by night. At the time referred to the boys had just retired to bed, when they heard one of the kids bleating piteously, and its cry followed by the tramp of the others running to the tent for protection. Harold and Robert sprang to their guns, and calling the dogs, seized each a burning brand, and hurried in the direction of the kid, whose wail of pain and fear became every moment more faint, until it was lost in the distance. The depredator was without doubt a panther. Such a circumstance was calculated to dishearten the boys exceedingly; for it forewarned them that not only were they likely to lose all their pets, but that there was no safety to themselves, and particularly none to Frank, if he should incautiously straggle into a panther's way. They called Nanny to a spot near the tent, fastened her by the dog's chain to a bush, threw a supply of wood on the fire sufficient to burn for some hours, and retired to bed sad and uneasy. Returning from their unsuccessful sally, Harold significantly shook his head, and said, "I will be ready for him before he has time to be hungry again."
There was no other disturbance that night. Frank was asleep at the time of the accident, and knew nothing of it until the next morning, when seeing Nanny fastened near the tent, he asked why that was, and where was the other kid. "Poor Jinny!" he exclaimed, on hearing of its fate (the kids, being a male and female, had been called Paul and Virginia). "Poor Jinny! So you are gone!" He went to Nanny, the chief mourner, and patting her smooth side said, in a pitying tone, "Poor Nanny! Ain't you sorry for your daughter? Only think, Nanny, that she is eaten up by a panther!" Nanny looked sorrowful enough, and replied, "Baa!" But whether that meant, "I am so sorry my daughter is dead," or, "I wish you would loose my chain, and let me eat some of this nice grass," Frank could not determine. After a breakfast, by no means the most cheerful, Harold said,
"Robert, we must make a picket fence for the protection of these poor brutes. But as I have a particular reason for wishing some fresh venison before night, I want to arrange matters so that either you or I shall go out early enough to be sure of obtaining it."
Robert urged him to go at once, but disliking the appearance of avoiding labour, he preferred to remain, and aid them through the most laborious part of the proposed work. The palisade was made of strong stakes, eight or ten feet long, sharpened at one end, and driven into a narrow trench, which marked the dimensions of the enclosure. Harold assisted to cut and transport to the spot the requisite number of stakes; and shortly after noon took Frank as his companion, and left Robert and Sam to complete the work. He had not been gone more than an hour and a half, before Robert heard the distant report of a heavily loaded gun, in the direction of the spot where the brant and ducks had been shot.
"Eh! eh!" said Sam, "Mas Harrol load he gun mighty hebby for a rifle!"
"Yes," said Robert, "and he has chosen a very poor weapon for shooting ducks."
The workmen were too intently engaged to reflect that the report which they heard could not have proceeded from a rifle. In the course of half an hour another report, but of a sharper sound, was heard much nearer, and appearing to proceed from the neighbourhood of the orange-trees, on the tongue of land. Robert now looked inquiringly at Sam, and was about to remark, "That gun cannot be Harold's--it has not the crack of a rifle;" but the doubt was only momentary, and soon passed away. Long afterwards the familiar sound of Harold's piece was heard in the west, and a little before sunset Harold and Frank appeared, bearing a fat young deer between them.
"That looks nice; but you have been unfortunate, Harold," said Robert, who having finished the pen, and introduced into it Nanny and the two young ones, had wiped his brows, and sat down to rest.
"Why so?"