“Yes, boy.”
“And I went down the paddock.”
“Well?”
“And I fired at the cock.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m afraid he—wants to be—buried.”
“Well, well, well, never mind, boy; I forgive you because you’ve come like a man and like a Highlander and told me. We’ll put the poor cock in the pot and have him for dinner.”
“Oh, no, no, dear papa,” cried Harry, looking up now for the first time, “I could not bear to see him cooked.”
“Well, go and bury him yourself, then.”
Harry ran off happy, and Yonitch and he dug a grave and buried the poor cock’s corpse, and it took Harry a whole week’s work in the tool-house to fashion him a “wooden tombstone,” and write an epitaph. The epitaph ran as follows:—