Toby looked up fiercely at the murderer of his pet, and asked, savagely: "Why don't you go away? Don't you see that you have killed Mr. Stubbs, an' you'll be hung for murder?"
"I wouldn't have done it under any circumstances," said the young man, pitying Toby's grief most sincerely. "Come away, and let me put the poor thing out of its agony."
"How can you do it?" asked Toby, bitterly; "he's dying already."
"I know it, and it will be a favor to him to put a bullet through his head."
If Toby had been large enough, perhaps there might really have been a murder committed; for he looked up at the man who so coolly proposed to kill the poor monkey after he had already received his death-wound that the young man stepped back quickly, as if really afraid that in his desperation the boy might do him some injury.
"Go 'way off," said Toby, passionately, "an' don't ever come here again. You've killed all I ever had in this world of my own to love me, an' I hate you—I hate you."
Then turning again to the monkey, he put his hands each side of his head, and leaning down, kissed the little brown lips as tenderly as a mother would kiss her child.
The monkey was growing more and more feeble, and when Toby had shown this act of affection, he reached up his tiny paws, grasped Toby's finger, raised himself half from the ground, and then, as a more convulsive struggle came, fell back dead, while the tiny fingers slowly relaxed their hold of the boy's hand.
Toby feared that it was death, and yet hoped that he had been mistaken; he looked into the half-open, fast-glazing eyes, put his hand over his heart to see if it was not still beating, and getting no responsive look from the dead eyes, feeling no heart-throbs from under that bloody breast, he knew that his pet was really dead, and he flung himself by his side in all the childish abandon of grief.
He called the monkey by name, implored him to look at him, and finally bewailed that he had ever left the circus, where at least his pet's life was safe, even if his own back received its daily flogging.