s in a form which the bell was powerless to avert. An
Indian, paddling down the Quah-Davic to the sea, caught sight of the
red cow drinking by the waterside. He knew there was no settlement
within leagues. He knew the cow was a stray, and therefore no man's
property. He knew he wanted fresh meat, to say nothing of cowhide for
moccasins and thongs. Up went his big smooth-bore muzzle-loader. There
was a deafening, clattering report, unlike the smart detonation of a
rifle. The little red cow fell on her knees, with a cough and a wild
clamour of the bell, then rolled over in the shallow, shimmering
water. With a whoop of exultation, the Indian thrust ashore; and, as
he did so, the black yearling, taught terror at last by the report and
by the human voice, broke from his covert in a willow thicket and
dashed wildly into the woods.

When he came back, hours later, the Indian had vanished, and, with
that strident bellow of his, from which the calf-bleat was not yet
quite gone, he trotted down the bank to look for his mother. But the
smell of fresh blood, and the red spectacle which he saw on the
pebbles of the river-beach, struck a new and madder terror into his
heart. With stiffly uplifted tail and staring eyes, he dashed away
again into the woods.

From that day he never again went near that particular meadow;
neither, though for days he called to her in his loneliness, did he
search any more for the mother who had so suddenly disappeared out of
his life. Standing on the edge of a bluff, in the fading sunset, he
would thrust his head and neck out straight and bellow his sonorous
appeal. Then he would stop and listen long for an answer. And as he
called, evening after evening in vain, a deeper, surer tone came into
his voice, a more self-reliant, masterful look into the lonely but
fearless eyes with which he surveyed the solitude.

Again came autumn to the Quah-Davic, with the pale blue smoke of
asters along the meadow-ledges, the pale gold glimmer of birches on
the slopes, and the wax-vermilion bunches of the rowan-berries
reflected in each brown pool. By this time the black bull was of the
stature of a well-grown two-year-old, massive in the shoulder, lean
and fine in limb and flank, with a cushion of dense, close, inky curls
between his horns. The horns themselves--very short, thick,
keen-pointed spikes of horns--were not set forward, but stood out
absolutely straight on either side of his broad black head. Young
thoug