“I didn't know I was firing at your pet,” he said to Toby as he laid his hand on his shoulder and endeavored to make him look up. “I only saw a little patch of fur through the trees, and, thinking it was some wild animal, I fired. Forgive me, won't you, and let me put the poor brute out of his misery?”
Toby looked up fiercely at the murderer of his pet and asked, savagely: “Why don't you go away? Don't you see that you have killed Mr. Stubbs, an' you'll be hung for murder?”
“I wouldn't have done it under any circumstances,” said the young man, pitying Toby's grief most sincerely. “Come away and let me put the poor thing out of its agony.”
“How can you do it?” asked Toby, bitterly. “He's dying already.”
“I know it, and it will be a kindness to put a bullet through his head.”
If Toby had been big enough, perhaps there might really have been a murder committed, for he looked up at the man who so coolly proposed to kill the poor monkey after he had already received his death wound that the young man stepped back quickly, as if really afraid that in his desperation the boy might do him some injury.
“Go 'way off,” said Toby, passionately, “an' don't ever come here again. You've killed all I ever had in this world of my own to love me, an' I hate you—I hate you!”
Then, turning again to the monkey, he put his hands on each side of his head, and, leaning down, kissed the little brown lips as tenderly as a mother would kiss her child.
The monkey was growing more and more feeble, and when Toby had shown this act of affection he reached up his tiny paws, grasped Toby's finger, half raised himself from the ground, and then with a convulsive struggle fell back dead, while the tiny fingers slowly relaxed their hold of the boy's hand.
Toby feared that it was death, and yet hoped that he was mistaken; he looked into the half open, fast glazing eyes, put his hand over his heart, to learn if it were still beating; and, getting no responsive look from the dead eyes, feeling no heart throbs from under that gory breast, he knew that his pet was really dead, and flung himself by his side in all the childish abandonment of grief.