d felt much more at home in the barn than at the house. For the
stock saw no change in him. Believer or unbeliever, rationalist,
evolutionist, he was still the same to them. Upon them, in reality,
fell the ill consequences of his misspent or well-spent college life;
for the money which might have gone for shingles and joists and more
provender, had in part been spent on books describing the fauna of the
earth and the distribution of species on its surface. Some had gone for
treatises on animals under domestication, while his own animals under
domestication were allowed to go poorly fed and worse housed. He had
had the theory; they had had the practice. But they apprehended nothing
of all this. How many tragedies of evil passion brutes escape by not
understanding their owners! We of the human species so often regret
that individuals read each other's natures so dimly: let us be
thankful! David was glad, then, that this little aggregation of
dependent creatures, his congregation of the faithful, neither
perceived the change in him, nor were kept in suspense by the tragedy
growing at the house.

They had been glad to see him on his return. Captain, who had met him
first, was gladdest, perhaps. Then the horses, the same old ones. One
of them, he fancied, had backed up to him, offering a ride. And the
cows were friendly. They were the same; their calves were different.
The sheep about maintained their number, their increase by nature
nearly balancing their decrease by table use.

One member of the flock David looked for in vain: the boldest,
gentlest--there usually is one such. Later on he found it represented
by a saddle blanket. After his departure for college, his mother had
conceived of this fine young wether in terms of sweetbreads, tallow for
chapped noses, and a soft seat for the spine of her husband. Even the
larded dame of the snow-white sucklings had remembered him well, and
had touched her snout against his boots; so that hardly had he in the
old way begun to stroke her bristles, before she spoke comfortably of
her joy, and rolled heavily over in what looked like a grateful swoon.

No: his animals had not changed in their feelings toward him; but how
altered he in his understanding of them! He had formerly believed that
these creatures were created for the use of man--that old conceited
notion that the entire earth was a planet of provisions for human
consumption. It had never even occurred to him to think that