"You're p'isoned!" shrieked Miss Pray: "be you prepared, Belle O'Neill?
Fat pig! He was prob'bly bloated with p'ison! Oh, dear! oh, mercy!
you're prob'bly dyin' this very minit."

Belle O'Neill began to howl, Wesley to weep dismally with low moans,
his fists in his eyes.

I had a medicine which I administered to the two, in case the exigency
were as fearful as Miss Pray predicted, which I strongly doubted. From
this, as Belle O'Neill recovered, she turned to Miss Pray with the
confessional fearlessness of one who has been at the grave's brink.

"And, oh, Miss Pray! the brindle cow 's calved and hid it in the woods!"

"So you've been down by the sea-wall, hunting up things to p'ison the
only friend you ever had on earth with, and left the brindle cow and
her calf to die in the woods?"

But Belle O'Neill had reached that plane of despondency where the
slings and arrows of outrageous fortune could no longer sting her.

"I meant it for the best, Miss Pray," she said, as we all started, with
the lantern, for the woods.

Never had I engaged in a scene of such eerie fascinations; especially
as, when we discovered the cow with her calf, and endeavored to set the
latter on its feet and lead it, the cow shook her horns at us with such
an aggressive lunge, I fled without apology behind a tree, where Miss
Pray and Wesley, dropping the lantern, pursued me with entreaties for
protection!

But Belle O'Neill, seemingly conscious that she had to redeem herself
by some heroic act or die, picked up the lantern and continued leading
the calf, at which the cow singled her out with respect and obediently
followed her: so that we who had witnessed her disgrace now followed
meekly, afar off, her triumphal procession homeward.

"That girl has done nobly," I said.

"Belle O'Neill," said Miss Pray, before we finally sought that repose
which is the guerdon of all nobly sustained adventure, "the drownin'
and the p'isonin' is both forgot, and next time the jew'lry pedler
comes along you shall have a breas'pin--that is, if you're livin',
Belle O'Neill."

"Oh, Belle will live," I cried; "the danger is over."

"Whether I lives or whether I dies," said Belle O'Neill, calm now on
heights above us all, "I meant that roast pig for the best, Miss Pray."

But before I could get to sleep that night I gave myself up to folly; I
rolled in inextinguishable fits of laughter. My gray heraldry, my
ancient coat of arms, innocently maligned as the