[UNCLE ZED'S WOLF.]
A TRUE STORY.
BY MRS. KATE UPSON CLARK.
"Baa! baa! baa!" sounded in noisy, frightened chorus underneath Parson Darius Miller's windows one cold April morning about fifty years ago.
So loud and so persistent was the chorus that Parson Miller's three sturdy boys were awake and on their feet before it had grown light enough to distinguish anything in the gray outside.
"Father! father!" shouted James, the second boy, clattering down the stairs in his heavy boots, "what ails the sheep? They're all huddled up close to the house, right under your window. Don't you hear them? Say, father, wake up!"
In response to all this outcry, good Parson Miller, who was a hardworking farmer as well as a parson, and slept the sleep of the just, gave forth a feeble and only half-intelligent "yes." Presently, however, he joined the boys, and then discovered that not all the sheep were huddled together underneath the windows, but that two of them were missing, and that large dangerous-looking tracks were all over the light snow—a regular "sugar-snow"—which covered the ground outside.
"I'll bet it's a wolf," ventured Daniel, the eldest boy.
"Guess it's nothing but a wild-cat," said the parson.
"Too big for a wild-cat," said Tom. "A great deal bigger than the one Squire Taylor caught in his trap."