e others. And behind them, as they hurried,
sounded the baying of the St. Bernard, ignominiously chained to a stake
by the kitchen door.

The evening wore on. Overhead the low-hanging clouds covered the
moonless sky like a hood, and not a star shone through the fleecy
thickness to aid in the search for the little girl. At a late hour it
began to sprinkle again, and, though no sound of shot or blast had
broken the silence of the prairie, one by one the anxious hunters came
straggling home, dumbly ate, and waited for the morning.

The little girl's mother, sitting behind the stove, cried heartbrokenly.
"If my poor baby ever comes back alive," she sobbed, "she shall have her
birthday in June and the best present I can get her." And all the big
brothers silently assented.

But while they were gathered thus, drying their damp clothes, the
biggest brother suddenly sprang up with a joyful cry.

"Why didn't we think of it before?" he said--"the St. Bernard!"

A moment later he was freeing the big dog, and his mother, lantern in
hand, was holding a little gingham dress against his muzzle.

"Find her! Find her!" she commanded. "Go, go! Find her!"

The St. Bernard shook himself free of the chain that had bound him,
looked into the faces that peered at him through the dim lantern-light,
and then, giving a long sniff, proud, human, and contemptuous, walked
slowly and majestically toward the sod barn. The family followed
wonderingly.

When the corn-cribs were reached, the dog quickened his pace to a trot
and began to wave his big, bushy tail in friendly greeting to something
that, farther on in the dark, could not be seen by the little girl's
mother and the big brothers. And when he came near the wide, closed door
of the barn, in front of which showed indistinctly the forms of a large
and a small animal, he leaped forward with a welcoming bark that was
answered by another from a dog lying in the deep shadow against the
door.

For there stood the blind black colt and the pinto with the bridle-reins
still swinging across her neck. And on her back lay the little girl, her
arms hanging down on either side of the sheepskin saddle-blanket, her
head pillowed in sleep against her horse's mane.

IV

A PARIAH OF THE PRAIRIES

THE young cowbird, perched tail to windward on a stone beside the road,
raised his head, and uttered a hoarse cry of hunger and lonesomeness as
a great black flock of his own kind, sweeping by on it