"No, Mass' B—— don't ax ole Horace to do dat ar, 'cause he couldn't, no how."
Father then called Tom and whispered to him, and afterwards to my mother, who took me softly by the hand and asked me to come with her to the sitting-room, where she explained to me that Humpy was too badly hurt this time to get well, and told me what father had whispered to Tom.
She had hardly finished, when I heard the crack of the pistol in the direction of the barn,—it almost seemed to me that the ball had gone through my heart.
Horace laid my little dead pet in the old box of wool, nailed it up, and we buried him with all the household by, at the foot of the garden, under a sickle pear tree, the fruit of which he had liked best.
And what became of dear old Horace?
After Walter and I went away from home, a great change came over Horace; he grew silent and reserved, and liked to be alone a great deal, and finally, with his savings, he bought a small tract of land, on the top of one of the highest hills in the neighborhood, where he built himself a little house and kept a great many goats. One morning one of his nearest neighbors, on going out, found some ten or fifteen goats at his door, bleating most piteously. Knowing that nobody thereabouts kept goats but Horace, and suspecting that something was wrong, he called one of his men and started over to Horace's house. When they got there, they found Horace lying on his bed, his hands folded peacefully across his breast—dead.