But that was not the worst. Atahualpa was still flourishing, although a great-great-grandmother. One morning I found reason to seclude her from the rest of the community, and by an arrangement of hutches, I shut off a little yard for her by herself.
I came back a few hours later, and I found Brastias had displayed himself in his true colours at last. He had leaped the barrier, and was standing with gory mouth and fiery eye, over the carcase of a baby guinea-pig. In another corner of the hutch was Atahualpa, behaving with the supremest indifference to six more.
That day I gave away sixteen guinea-pigs. But I believe that we should have had a repetition of Bishop Hatto, if it had not been for the last check—namely, massacre.
We were overrun with rats, and rat-catchers were sent for. One morning two men came up with their dogs. The men were looking at the rat-holes, and arranging a plan of campaign, when suddenly they found that the dogs were not with them. Across the wall which separated the cow stables and haystacks from the garden and guinea-pig yard, they heard a doleful noise. They ran round, and found that the dogs had been doing their duty nobly, and all the guinea-pigs but two lay dead on the ground.
The victims were buried in a large grave, and my brother found a suitable slate and wrote a Latin epitaph on it. He put it up as a headstone, and enjoyed the proceeding very much.
But I did not enjoy it. I had not the heart to keep guinea-pigs any more. I gave away the two survivors, and the hutches mouldered away, and cucumbers grew over the yard, and only the genealogy and the tombstone were left as memorials of that very large family with the white coats and jewelled eyes.
XI
FINISHED SOLOMON
KING Solomon was journeying through a thirsty land—sand beneath his feet, sand around as far as a man could see, above the pitiless blue sky. No tree could grow here, and no rock was there to cast its shadow on the sand. “What shall shield me,” said the king, “from the fury of this sun?” Then was heard the sound of light wings beating the air, for all creatures knew the voice of the words of King Solomon; and there came through the air a cloud of hoopoes, and they spread their barred wings, and closed them together, wing to wing, and they shielded King Solomon. So, when the toilsome journey was over, the king called the hoopoes, and said, “O hoopoes, what will ye that I give you for your service done to me this day?” And the hoopoes said, “O King, give us crowns of gold”; and the king gave the hoopoes crowns of pure gold.