BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD.
"Father," exclaimed Katy Chittenden, the moment the buggy stopped in front of the gate, "Bun Gates and Rube Hollenhouser were here this morning just after you went away, and they said all our cows were in Mr. Gates's pasture lot."
Deacon Chittenden and his wife and his son William were all in the buggy, and the seat did not look uncomfortably full either. All three of them answered Katy in the same breath, with,
"How did they get in?"
"Oh, I don't know. They didn't say. Rube didn't say anything. It was Bun. He wanted me to tell you."
"It's all that new cow's doings," groaned her father, and the news seemed to make him slow in getting out of the buggy.
"Bun Gates and Rube Hollenhouser are the roughest pair of fellows," began William, but his father checked him.
"They drive my cows for me half the time, William. They drove 'em up to the lot this morning. I'd never have trusted you with that new cow."
It was a serious matter, and it had been on Katy Chittenden's mind all the morning. She had formed an extraordinary idea concerning the "new cow" for which her father had paid so much. So costly a creature, with such horns, and so dreadfully brindled, and that kicked the milk-pail at least three feet, was to be regarded with awe.