"Giner'l, hit'll never walk, we'll hafter kill it."
"I don't want to see it done, Jim. I'll go in. Po' ole Betty—that she should be played off on like that!" He stroked the mare's neck with a kindly pat, and went in.
Breakfast was ready for him. He sat down, abstracted, worried. Uncle Jack, his grandson, eighteen, slender, and slightly lame, and who didn't love to talk of the war, nor the thought of going to West Point, and who wanted always to study about trees and a better way of farming, sat next to Little Sister. The General told him of his misfortune. "It is a great disappointment to me, suh, old Betty, my favorite saddle mare—I've ridden her for fifteen years—the best mare in Tennessee, by gad, suh, the very best!
"It's weak, puny and no-count, Jack," he went on as he tested his coffee—"deformed or something in its front, and knuckles over, can't stand up."
"That's too bad," said Uncle Jack; "I'll go out after breakfast and see what I can do for it, Grandfather."
"No use," said the General, gruffly. "It'll be merciful to destroy it. I've told Jim, too; it'll be better off dead."
Little Sister had not seemed to listen, but she had heard. This last remark of her grandsire stopped a spoonful of oatmeal half way to her mouth. The next instant, unobserved, she had slipped from her chair and gone to the barn.
"I tell you, Jack, I think this breeding business is a poor lottery," went on the old General after a while. "To think of old Betty, the gamest, speediest, best mare I ever owned—"
There were protesting screams from the barn. They were instantly recognized as Little Sister's. Uncle Jack glanced at her empty place, paled, kicked over two chairs and a setter dog which blocked the door, and rushed to the barn.
A tragedy was on there. A negro stood in old Betty's stall with an ax in his hand. On some straw in a far corner lay a sorry-looking colt. But it was not alone, for Little Sister stood over it, shaking her tiny fist at the black executioner, and screaming with grief and anger: