"Yes," he said, with a smile. And right here let me say horses do smile. "She thinks her calf is over on the other side of that high board fence, in the calf pasture, while in reality it was sold a week ago. You see our master is a merciful man; he separates the mothers from their young almost from the first. For a while he lets the calf through a door in the wall, to its mother, three or four times a day, then twice, and finally not at all; but all the while each is content, because they believe the other is right there. The cow is not worried, and gives down her milk bountifully; the calf is content and thrives. My master is not only merciful, but shrewd."
"And you seem to have an easy time," I suggested.
"Easy, to be sure. He says I have done hard work enough to retire, and have earned money enough for him that he can afford to keep me on the interest of it."
One event of interest, to part at least of the Wallace family, I have not mentioned. It was when we had been at M—— about a year. Grim had been down street with the boys, and on reaching the gateway of home he fell in a fit. Master and I had just driven up. Mrs. Wallace, from the piazza, gave a cry and began to scream, "Mad dog." Poor Grim, coming out of it, rolled his eyes piteously from one to another. With a desperate struggle he regained his feet and attempted to walk, but his back gave way and before the doctor could reach Grim he lay writhing in another spasm. Mrs. Wallace screamed the louder from a safe place inside the door; and Master, speaking rougher than I ever heard him speak to her before, bade her be still, adding that the poor fellow had been poisoned.
"Bring me a bottle of sweet oil from the office," he commanded Park, "and be quick about it."
Grim was coming out of the fourth fit when the oil came, and among them they managed to pour a gill or so down his throat. He had ever so many more spasms, but finally got better; that is, he did not die then, but never got well; just pined away and finally died.
By this means we became aware that M—— had a cat and dog poisoner; "a man too mean to live and too wicked to die," the neighbors said of him.
Many handsomer and more valuable dogs than dear old Grim fell a victim to his rascality, but few were more sincerely mourned. So officious was this individual that it was nothing uncommon to see little girls bending their curly heads over pet kittens stiff as death, or ladies wringing their hands in agony over the sufferings of some canine or feline pet.
And the sufferings of the latter were terrible to witness.
But I have heard say that every town has one man in it so far lost to human decency that he assumes the right to thus torture other people's pets.