It may sound strange, but over this even Dinny felt aggrieved, coming to Dick coolly enough one night, just before sleeping time, with,—
“Would ye mind handing me out two or three of thim bundles o’ feathers, Masther Dick, dear?”
“What for, Dinny?” he asked in astonishment.
“An’ is it what for?” said Dinny indignantly; “shure, an’ ye wouldn’t have a boy slape on the bare flure, when ye’ve got hapes of feather to make beds with inside?”
Poor Dinny was sent to the right about, and the feathers had a very narrow escape the very next day from being burned to blackened ashes.
Chapter Forty Six.
The Bay runs his Last Race.
During the long backward journey, poor Smiler the chestnut and Toothpick the grey succumbed to the poison of the tsetse fly, gradually waning away so, poor beasts, that Mr Rogers felt glad when on one occasion a lion leaped upon the half-dead chestnut and dragged it down—dying in the act though, for Dick’s rifle sent a bullet crashing through the monster’s head.