The appearance of the dish testified only too plainly that she and Wesley had dined.
"You're p'isoned!" shrieked Miss Pray: "be you prepared, Belle O'Neill? Fat pig! He was prob'bly bloated with p'ison! Oh, dear! oh, mercy! you're prob'bly dyin' this very minit."
Belle O'Neill began to howl, Wesley to weep dismally with low moans, his fists in his eyes.
I had a medicine which I administered to the two, in case the exigency were as fearful as Miss Pray predicted, which I strongly doubted. From this, as Belle O'Neill recovered, she turned to Miss Pray with the confessional fearlessness of one who has been at the grave's brink.
"And, oh, Miss Pray! the brindle cow 's calved and hid it in the woods!"
"So you've been down by the sea-wall, hunting up things to p'ison the only friend you ever had on earth with, and left the brindle cow and her calf to die in the woods?"
But Belle O'Neill had reached that plane of despondency where the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune could no longer sting her.
"I meant it for the best, Miss Pray," she said, as we all started, with the lantern, for the woods.
Never had I engaged in a scene of such eerie fascinations; especially as, when we discovered the cow with her calf, and endeavored to set the latter on its feet and lead it, the cow shook her horns at us with such an aggressive lunge, I fled without apology behind a tree, where Miss Pray and Wesley, dropping the lantern, pursued me with entreaties for protection!
But Belle O'Neill, seemingly conscious that she had to redeem herself by some heroic act or die, picked up the lantern and continued leading the calf, at which the cow singled her out with respect and obediently followed her: so that we who had witnessed her disgrace now followed meekly, afar off, her triumphal procession homeward.