On went the mad struggle for life. There was a whistle near by, and I knew the express was coming. Upsidaisi was nowhere in sight, and Tom-Tom was nosing through the long grass eagerly. Then there was a little glimmer of white and silver in the sun, and Upsidaisi flew across the track just as the express rounded the curve. Tom-Tom followed, heedless of his danger, and the cow-catcher, striking his tense body, threw him so far up into the air that the corpse has not yet been recovered.
I stood aghast at the fiendish cleverness of it. Little Upsidaisi had decoyed his enemy to the track, at the very moment the express was to pass!
Scarcely conscious of what I did, I picked up the exhausted Mouse and walked home in a brown study. My soul was torn with grief at the loss of my pet, but the new facts in Natural History that I had learned were worth some sacrifice.
As I sat at my table, writing in my journal, I heard a low, mournful sound from the shelf and then the words, tapped out in the Morse code: “Forgive me; I had to do it.”
“Instinctively, I followed them.”
I foolishly paid no attention, but went on writing down the noble ideas that surged hotly through my brain. Later on—I shall never know how much later—I heard the dull sound of a falling body, and the pungent odour of cyanide of potassium filled the room. The bottle of it which I kept on the shelf to attract butterflies had been opened and drained to the dregs.
Close by it, with the glaze of death over his bright eyes, lay Upsidaisi. Heart-broken by my coldness, the little Mouse had committed suicide.
Little feet, little feet, shall I see your delicate tracery no more around the door of my cabin in the wilderness? The end of a wild animal is always a tragedy.