reathlessly against a rough post, I staggered down on
an upturned bucket, and Sam reached out his long, blue-overalled arms
and embraced Buttercup's neck and buried his head on her patient
shoulder, just as a faint streak of April dawn showed behind the
oak-trees, for we realized then that the dreadful cramp was gone and
that she could chew the wisp of hay offered by Byrd.

"Hic-chew! All out of the woods," wheezed Dr. Chubb, as he looked at old
Buttercup and the two other young cows we had been working over all
night, with as fine an exaltation of achievement as any I ever saw, not
excepting that of an American man of letters I witnessed take his degree
at Oxford.

But Sam's head was still bowed on old Buttercup's back and I went and
stood beside him.

"Will I ever learn how to take care the right way of--of life?" he said
under his breath, as he stood up straight and tall with the early light
streaming over his great mop of sun-bronzed hair and the bare breast
from which his open shirt fell away.

"I'll help you," I said, as I came still nearer and leaned against
Buttercup's warm, yellow side so closely that she looked around from her
meal from the Byrd's hand and mooed with grateful affection plus
surprise to find us still standing by her so determinedly. "That is,
if--if--I can learn myself."

"You haven't found out you are a woman yet, have you, Betty?" answered
Sam, with a laugh that embarrassed me. I would have considered it
ungrateful if it hadn't sounded so comfortable and warm out in the cold
of the dawn--which had come before I realized that midnight had passed,
about which time I had intended to go home. But how could a person feel
guilty while playing Good Samaritan to a cow? I didn't.

Then, as the streak of new day widened into a soft pink flush over the
tops of the bare trees that etched their fine twigs into an archaic
pattern against a purple sky lit by the gorgeous flame of the morning
star retreating before the coming sun, we all collected buckets and rags
and bottles and sponges. In Indian file we were led by Sam around the
hill, up a steep path that was bordered by coral-strung buck-bushes and
rasping blackberry brush, and to his little farm-house perched on a
plateau almost up to the top of the hill. It was long and low, with a
wide red roof that seemed to hover in the whitewashed walls and green
shutters; while white smoke from an old gray-rock, mud-daubed chimney
melted away among the tre